Immigrant Welfare Receipt across Europe

The issue of welfare receipt by immigrants is highly controversial across Europe. In this paper, we assess whether immigrants are more likely to receive welfare payments relative to natives across a range of European countries. Using the European Union Survey on Income and Living Conditions for 2007, we find very little evidence that immigrants are indeed more likely to receive such payments when all payments are considered together. This is true whether we use raw data or regression analysis in which we control for relevant characteristics. We do find evidence of higher rates of poverty among immigrants. When combined with the results on welfare receipt, this raises a question over the effectiveness of welfare systems in protecting immigrants from poverty across Europe.immigrants, welfare, Europe

THE AGEING WORKFORCE IN IRELAND: WORKING CONDITIONS, HEALTH AND EXTENDING WORKING LIVES. ESRI RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 92 OCTOBER 2019

Extending working lives is a central element of active ageing policy in Ireland and Europe, and is seen as promoting active lifestyles and sustaining social protection systems in the context of an ageing population. However, efforts to extend working life must consider the reasons why workers leave employment early. Simply raising the minimum retirement age will not build sustainable jobs. A central element of this picture is the health and working conditions faced by older workers. This project explores the retention of older workers in Ireland, drawing on several sources of data to describe their experience in the Irish labour market. While there is no official age threshold to classify a worker as an older worker, the literature on ageing workforce often focuses on workers aged 55 and over.1 In Ireland, according to the 2018 Labour Force Survey, there are currently 396,060 workers in this age category, accounting for 18 per cent of the employed population. We set out to explore the following questions: • How do the working conditions and the health of older workers compare to those of younger workers? • What types of jobs and working conditions are associated with perceived ability to work longer? • Which sectors and occupations are best able to retain older workers? • Among those who exit early (aged 55–59 years), what are their reasons for leaving work? • Are older workers more vulnerable to fatal injury in the workforce? Are they embedded in sectors prone to injury

“New” and “Old” Social Risks: Life Cycle and Social Class Perspectives on Social Exclusion in Ireland*

The life cycle concept has come to have considerable prominence in Irish social policy debate. However, this has occurred without any systematic effort to link its usage to the broader literature relating to the concept. Nor has there been any detailed consideration of how we should set about operationalising the concept. In this paper we argue the need for “macro” life cycle perspectives that have been influenced by recent challenges to the welfare state to be combined with “micro” perspectives focusing on the dynamic and multidimensional nature of social exclusion. We make use of Irish EU-SILC 2005 data in developing a life cycle schema and considering its relationship to a range of indicators of social exclusion. At the European level renewed interest in the life cycle concept is associated with the increasing emphasis on the distinction between “new” and “old” social risks and the notion that the former are more “individualised”. Inequality and poverty rather than being differentially distributed between social classes are thought to vary between phases in the average work life. Our findings suggest the “death of social class” thesis is greatly overblown. A more accurate appreciation of the importance of new and old social risks requires that we systematically investigate the manner in which factors such as social class and the life cycle interact.

Immigrants and Welfare Receipt in Ireland

Since 2004, Ireland has included in its system of social welfare payments criteria for receipt which limit the extent to which immigrants can receive welfare payments. In this paper, we compare the rates of receipt of welfare for immigrants and natives to see if the outcome is consistent with the operation of this policy. Using data from 2008, we generally find lower rates of welfare receipt among immigrants. While the numbers of immigrants claiming unemployment-related payments surged at the outset of the recession, there appears to have been a quicker stabilisation in the number of immigrants claiming such benefits relative to natives, based on official data from 2007 to 2010. This would be consistent with the on-going implementation of the type of criteria introduced in 2004.Ireland, immigrants, welfare

Discrimination and Inequality in Housing in Ireland. ESRI Research Series, June 2018

Access to housing is a fundamental human right protected under international conventions such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Social Charter. Adequate housing is also necessary for the achievement of other basic rights such as health and family life and is central to quality of life of adults and children. In Ireland, discrimination in the provision of housing is prohibited under the Equal Status Acts (2000- 2015). Starting from these legislative protections, in this study we consider whether certain groups in Ireland experience higher levels of discrimination in access to housing and whether they experience unequal housing outcomes. Membership of these groups is linked to other relevant characteristics, most importantly socio-economic background. Therefore, this study investigates whether equality groups experience disadvantages in housing outcomes that cannot be fully explained by their socio-economic resources. The study of housing discrimination and outcomes has become even more pressing in recent years because of the marked undersupply of housing in Ireland and problems of affordability

Access to Childcare and Home Care Services across Europe. An Analysis of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU SILC), 2016. Social Inclusion Report No 8. September 2019

This report uses EU-SILC data for 2016 to examine differences by social risk group and social class in access to care services – specifically, childcare and home care for people with an illness or disability. We focus on 11 countries and four welfare regimes across Europe. We also examine the association between access to these services and both poverty and employment. There are three main findings. First, countries with universal services, or a strong welfare state, provide greater access to care overall, and greater access for vulnerable social risk and social class groups. Countries with means tested services offer lower coverage which results in a greater chance of unmet need for care. Second, certain social-risk groups have a higher chance of experiencing unmet need for childcare and home care. Social class or household composition differences within such groups cannot fully explain their likelihood of reporting unmet need. This suggests that social-risk groups are particularly vulnerable to unmet need. Third, unmet need for childcare and home care is associated with deprivation and, in the case of childcare, non-employment. In this way, unmet need for childcare in particular may act as a barrier to labour market participation. Although our analysis cannot establish a causal link between the two, unmet care need and non-employment are related, and could be a significant force for social exclusion. Policy efforts should limit the experience of unmet care needs

Analysing Intergenerational Influences on Income Poverty and Economic Vulnerability with EU-SILC

The EU-SILC 2005 wave includes a special module on inter-generational transmission of poverty. In addition to the standard data relating to income and material deprivation, the information relating to parental background and childhood circumstances was collected for all household members or selected respondents aged over 24 and less than 66 at the end of the income reference period. In principle, the module provides an unprecedented opportunity to examine on a comparative European basis the relationship between current poverty and social exclusion outcomes and parental characteristics and childhood economic circumstances. In this paper we seek to exploit such potential. In pursuing this objective, it is necessary to address some of the limitations of the data. We do by restricting our attention to a set of countries where data issues seem less extreme. In addition we employ ‘dominance procedures in relation to parents’ education and social class to reduce the scale of the missing values problem. Finally, we compare findings from one dimensional and multidimensional approaches in order to provide an assessment of the extent to which our analysis provides a coherent account of the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage.Poverty, Intergenerational, EU-SILC

The Association Between Income Inequality and Mental Health: Social Cohesion or Social Infrastructure?. ESRI WP328. November 2009

A large literature has emerged around the strong association between income inequality and average life expectancy and a range of health outcomes including mental well being. Three possible explanations for the association have been offered: that the association is a statistical artefact; the ‘social cohesion hypothesis’ and lastly, the ‘neo-materialist hypothesis’. We examine the ability of these hypotheses to explain the link between income inequality and mental well being in data from 30 countries from the European Quality of Life Survey (2007). Our results offer support to the social cohesion and neo-materialist explanations but evidence for the neo-materialist hypothesis is strongest. Measures of expenditure on social protection and the quality of a range of social services reduce the coefficient measuring income inequality by over two thirds and render it insignificant. However, variables measuring social cohesion such as trust in others, civic participation and social contact reduce the income inequality coefficient by 44% and provide the best fitting model as measured by AIC value

Who earns, who shares and who decides: Does it matter for individual deprivation in couples? ESRI Research Bulletin 2016/1/3

Research on poverty usually assumes that household income is shared equally among household members so that they all benefit from the same living standard. This assumption has been criticised, however, by some who argue that differences in power within the household – typically linked to who receives the income or who makes the decisions – may mean that some members of households enjoy better access to goods and services than others. One possibility is that since women are less likely to have earned income, their bargaining power will be decreased and they will have higher levels of deprivation than their male partners. This study examined couple families in Ireland to test whether this was the case

Identifying Economically Vulnerable Groups as the Economic Crisis Emerged

A frequent refrain during recent debates on welfare cuts and tax increases has related to the need to “protect the vulnerable”. However, it is far from clear that a consensus exists on which individuals or groups are to be included under this heading with a consequent lack of clarity for the policy implications of pursuing this goal. In this paper, operating with a conception of social exclusion that incorporates notions of dynamics and multidimensionality, we make use of EUSILC 2008 data for Ireland to clarify the distinction between income poverty and economic vulnerability. We then proceed to consider the relationship between these outcomes and multiple deprivation, financial pressures and perceptions of recent and future economic prospects. Our analysis is then extended to compare patterns of risk for poverty and vulnerability in relation to key socio-economic groups. Finally, we will consider the relationship between poverty and vulnerability and the distribution of welfare dependence. Our analysis suggests that the vulnerable but non-poor group may need to be a key focus of policy attention in the future.