This paper examines the impact on inequality and poverty of the economic crisis in four European countries, namely France, Germany, the UK and Ireland, and the contribution of tax and benefit policy changes. The period examined, 2008 to 2010, was one of great economic turmoil, yet it is unclear...

Successive reports have put childcare costs in Ireland at among the highest in the OECD. In this paper, we investigate the usage and cost of childcare in Ireland, profiling those experiencing high childcare costs by income quintile; family type and number and age of children. We show how the...

We document the development and operation of the SWITCH model, Ireland's taxbenefit microsimulation model. Using the EUROMOD platform and process of creating an input model, we discuss adjustments to the underlying data, such as reweighting and uprating, aiming at improving representativeness in...

Take-up of social welfare is key to its success in alleviating poverty. For a variety of reasons, including stigma, transaction costs and information asymmetry, take-up of welfare benefits is imperfect. This research note discusses the issue of take-up of social welfare and its measurement. We...

If participation in the labour market helps to secure women's outside options in the case of divorce/separation, an increase in the perceived risk of marital dissolution may accelerate the increase in female labour supply. This simple prediction has been tested in the literature using time...

To assess the impact of tax-benefit policy changes on income distribution over time, we suggest a decomposition methodology based on counterfactual simulations. First, it provides an absolute measure of the impact of tax-benefit changes on inequality, which combines changes in policy structure...