This paper measures the degree of inequality of opportunity in birthweight and birthlength for a sample of Irish infants. The sample is partitioned into eight types by mothers' education and mothers' smoking status. Stochastic dominance tests reveal the presence of inequality of opportunity but...

There is now fairly substantial evidence of a socioeconomic gradient in low birthweight for developed countries. The standard summary statistic for this gradient is the concentration index. Using data from the recently published Growing Up in Ireland survey, this paper calculates this index for...

This paper examines the change in body mass index for a cohort of Irish children as they aged from 9 to 13 and decomposes the change into parts attributable to changes in observable characteristics and changes in returns to observable characteristics. The decomposition is carried out over the...

The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is frequently used as a measure of mental well-being with those people with values below a certain threshold regarded as suffering from mental stress. Comparison of mental stress levels across population may then be sensitive to the chosen threshold. This...

The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is frequently used as a measure of mental well-being. A consistent pattern across countries is that women report lower levels of mental well-being, as measured by the GHQ. This paper applies decomposition techniques to Irish data for 1994 and 2000 to...

There is now fairly substantial evidence of a socioeconomic gradient in low birthweight for developed countries. The standard summary statistic for this gradient is the concentration index. Using data from the recently published Growing Up in Ireland survey, this paper calculates this index for...

This paper calculates the concentration index for self-assessed health for a sample of Irish women. It then decomposes the index to investigate the sources of this inequality using both a health production function and reduced form approach. Using the health production function approach it finds...

This paper measures the degree of inequality of opportunity in birthweight and birthlength for a sample of Irish infants. The sample is partitioned into eight types by mothers' education and mothers' smoking status. Stochastic dominance tests reveal the presence of inequality of opportunity but...

The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is frequently used as a measure of mental well-being. A consistent pattern across countries is that women report lower levels of mental well-being, as measured by the GHQ. This paper applies decomposition techniques to Irish data for 1994 and 2000 to...

This paper examines the change in body mass index for a cohort of Irish children as they aged from 9 to 13 and decomposes the change into parts attributable to changes in observable characteristics and changes in returns to observable characteristics. The decomposition is carried out over the...