Changes in household structures and employment patterns alter the balance between households with an above- versus a below-average poverty risk while also affecting relative income poverty thresholds. Examining eleven countries for which suitable microdata is available from the Luxembourg Income...

Many studies have focused on how demographic dynamics, such as changes in marriage patterns and the increasing share of households headed by a single adult, may contribute to rising earnings inequality. Here we instead ask how demographic differences between countries may underpin differences in...

This paper explores the pattern of job loss in the Great Recession with a particular focus on its incidence by wage level, using data for Ireland. Ireland experienced a particularly pronounced decline in employment with the onset of the recession, by international and historical standards, which...

Ireland is one of the countries most severely affected by the Great Recession. National income fell by more than 10 per cent between 2007 and 2012, as a result of the bursting of a remarkable property bubble, an exceptionally severe banking crisis, and deep fiscal adjustment. This paper examines...

There are concerns that the unprecedented economic boom which Ireland experienced in the second half of the 1990s has raised only some living standards and has widened income gaps. This paper analyzes Ireland's income distribution in comparative perspective, to understand how Ireland's...

This paper estimates the contribution of intergenerational transfers (inheritances and gifts) and socioeconomic background to wealth inequality in four OECD countries: France, Spain, Great Britain and the United States. We compare the observed wealth distribution with a non-parametric...

One of the most frequently expressed concerns about the unprecedented economic boom that Ireland experienced in the second half of the 1990s has been that the benefits were not shared evenly, that rising living standards were accompanied by widening gaps leaving Ireland with a particularly...

Comprehensive analysis of economic inequality in developed countries. The contributors give their view on the state-of-the-art scientific research in their fields and add their own visions of future research.