We explore the measurement of social capital in an attempt to bring the empirical work closer to the theoretical literature. Specifically we use the Survey of Health Aging and Retirement in Europe for 2004 and 2006 to construct a composite index of social capital, using principal component...

National household and individual level data are used to explore perceived neighbourhood characteristics (PNC) and neighbourhood social participation (NSP) associations with later life disability onset (DO). The sample includes 3011 older people, with 8128 observations between 1995 and 2001....

This paper estimates the level of explained and unexplained factors that contribute to the wage gap between workers with and without disabilities, providing benchmark estimates for Ireland. It separates out the confounding impact of productivity differences between disabled and non-disabled, by...

As the extent of disability increases in society, there is an increasing need to understand its consequences for many aspects of social inclusion. Using the Living in Ireland Survey 1995-2001 (n=2727 adults), we provide a rigorous analysis of the transitions into and out of disability and the...

This paper gives a first-time assessment of the interaction between income security programmes (public and private) and the labour force behaviour of older people in Ireland. Workers close to retirement age face a trade-off between earnings from continued work and benefit payments from income...

This paper gives a first-time assessment of the interaction between retirement programs (public and occupational) and labor force behavior of older people in Ireland. Workers planning retirement face a trade-off between earnings from continued work and benefit payments from income security...

The proportion of total health care expenditure devoted to mental health care in Ireland, at just below 7%, is low relative to other countries. There have been few studies that have examined the relationship between public preferences for different kinds of health care expenditure and priority...

Funding in Irish hospitals is partially based on case mix, whereby resources are redistributed annually to hospitals with greater efficiency. Accurate measurement of efficiency is essential, so in this paper, we use Data Envelopment Analysis and Stochastic Frontier Analysis to measure technical...