Objective: To examine how age at first vaginal intercourse is related to the circumstances of sex and specifically to the nature of the relationship between the partners, levels of autonomy, planning and regret. To quantify the contribution of age at first sex relative to the context and...

Smoking is the largest cause of serious illness and premature death in Ireland accounting for approximately 7,000 deaths annually. Irish people spent ?1.9 billion on tobacco in 2000 - more than on petrol, electricity, coal, peat and oil combined. The Office of Tobacco Control commissioned the...

This paper reassesses the validity of a poverty measure combining relative income and non-monetary deprivation indicators, first developed and applied to Irish data for 1987, in the light of experience since then and current debates. A crucial issue is whether the measure has failed to capture...

Fixed term and casual employment have become increasingly common in OECD countries in the last decade. Research suggests that non-permanent contracts are associated with lower job quality. This paper examines differentials in three indicators of job quality in Ireland: hourly wage, probability...

This paper analyses the extent of equity of health service delivery across the income distribution in Ireland – that is the extent to which there is equal treatment for equal need irrespective of income. We find that almost all services, apart from dental and optician services, are used more...

This study is the latest in a series monitoring the evolution of poverty, based on data gathered by The ESRI in the Living in Ireland Surveys since 1994. These have allowed progress towards achieving the targets set out in the National Anti Poverty Strategy since 1997 to be assessed. The present...

The empirical association between income inequality, population health and other social problems is now well established and the research literature suggests that the relationship is not artefactual. Debate is still ongoing as to the cause of this association. Wilkinson, Marmot and colleagues...