Children in lone parent families typically experience not only parental absence but also sibling absence: they are more likely to be sole offspring or to have fewer siblings than children of stable unions. Previous research has looked at these factors separately and suggests that they might work...

Ireland provides an interesting case study of the distributional consequences of the Great Recession. To explore such effects we develop a measure of economic vulnerability based on a multidimensional risk profile for income poverty, material deprivation and economic stress. In the context of...

This paper undertakes a structured, focused case-study comparison of housing bubbles in Ireland and Spain, based on the selection of two most-different cases that nonetheless share a common outcome of interest. Both countries were exposed to the same set of changes in their international policy...

As part of its 2020 Strategy adopted, the EU has set a number of headline targets including one for poverty and social exclusion reduction. Our analysis in this paper suggests that, in focusing on the union of the three chosen component indicators, cross-nationally we are not comparing like with...

This working paper is based on the Irish report to the OECD Continuous Reporting System on Migration (the SOPEMI Expert Group). As such, the focus of the report is largely shaped by the reporting requirements for the preparation of the annual OECD International Migration Outlook. The principal...

Underfunding of defined benefit (DB) pension schemes is prevalent throughout the Western world, and no more so than Ireland. This paper examines underfunding of DB schemes and discusses alternative ways of overcoming this problem. It critically reviews alternative government sponsored insurance...

Steep socio-economic gradients in family size were a major source of disparities for children in the early 20th century and prompted much social research and public commentary. By the 1960s, a scholarly consensus was emerging that SES differentials in women’s fertility in western countries...

Many authors have proposed incorporating measures of well-being into evaluations of public policy. Yet few evaluations use experimental design or examine multiple aspects of well-being, thus the causal impact of public policies on well-being is largely unknown. In this paper we examine the...

This paper examines the relationship between maternal employment, childcare during infancy and the overweight status of pre-school children. Using data from the Infant Cohort of the Growing-Up in Ireland Survey, propensity score matching addresses the issue of potential selection bias, quantile...

This study evaluates the effectiveness of geographic diversification in reducing housing investment risk. To characterize diversification potential, we estimate spatial correlation and integration among 401 US metropolitan housing markets. The 2000s boom brought a marked uptrend in housing...