In 2010, 46 per cent of Irish-born mothers were breastfeeding at hospital discharge, in comparison with 84 per cent of non-Irish-born mothers. Using data from the Irish National Perinatal Reporting System, we find that maternal country of birth is a large and highly significant predictor of...

In the literature on the links between socio-economic status (SES) and child health, there is evidence that the SES gradient is weaker for objective indicators of child health (e.g., height) than for subjective indicators (e.g., parental-assessed health). In this paper, we use crosssectional...

Rapid economic and demographic change in Ireland over the last decade, with associated increases in car dependence and congestion, has focused policy on encouraging more sustainable forms of travel. In this context, knowledge of current travel patterns and their determinants is crucial. In this...

In health care, there is extensive empirical evidence that the behaviour of both providers and users is affected by the financial incentives that they face. In this paper, we adopt a systemwide perspective and develop a conceptual framework to examine how current financial incentives in Irish...

This paper applies the methodology of Ravallion and Chen in calculating growth incidence curves for Ireland over the 2003-2011 period, using measures of equivalised disposable income from the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC). These curves provide an indication of growth at different...

In a paper published in this journal in 2013 concentration indices for obesity were presented for male and female obesity. Decompositions of the indices were also presented. There was an error in the calculations which led to an overstatement of the concentration indices for obesity for both men...

Poverty dominance analysis uses stochastic dominance to provide rankings of distributions in terms of poverty which are not sensitive to the choice of poverty line. This analysis is carried out for Ireland using Household Budget Survey data for 1987 and 1994 including tests for the statistical...

This paper analyses the pure time-series properties of doctors’ fees in Ireland to assess whether a structural change in the series is observed at the time of the change in reimbursement in 1989. Such a break would be consistent with doctors responding to the reimbursement change in a manner...

Using the nationally representative SLÁN datasets for 2002 and 2007 we calculate concentration indices for the incidence of obesity for men and women. We find higher concentration indices for women than for men in both years, but that the gap narrowed over time with the index rising for men but...

Both overall income inequality and inequality in the distribution of earnings rose sharply during the 1980s and 1990s in a number of industrialised countries, notably the UK and the USA. This makes it particularly important to know how the distribution of income in Ireland has been changing over...