In this paper, we use data from a representative sample of Irish people to investigate inequalities in self-assessed health and examine, for the first time in Ireland, the degree to which these inequalities can be accounted for by processes occurring over the life-course. Research in a number of...

Hospital services in Ireland have developed into a complex mixture of public and private provision with private patients being treated in public as well as private hospitals. This interweaving of public and private medicine is driven to a large extent by the large proportion of the population...

Rates of smoking have decreased dramatically in most Northern European countries over the last fifty years or so, but this decline has not been uniform across the population and there have actually been increases in smoking among lower income and social class groups. Although smoking...

Research has shown that older individuals are far more likely to avail of health care and there is concern in a number of countries that the trend toward population ageing may mean that health care expenditures increase to unsustainable levels. However, there is a growing body of evidence that...

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...

This paper analyses the development of productivity and efficiency in the production of hospital care in Ireland from 1995 to 1998. Using Malmquist Productivity Indices, we look at changes in efficiency over time. This approach provides information on the types of hospitals that have increased...

This paper examines the determinants of general practitioner (GP) utilisation patterns in Ireland over the period 1987-2001. Using three different micro-data sets, the influence of socio-economic factors as well as health status variables on the demand for GP visits is analysed. A particular...

The extent to which the cost of obtaining health care influences the utilisation of GP and other health services is a frequently analysed topic. A key issue concerns the extent to which access to private health insurance and/or eligibility for free public health services results in differences...