Economic Boom and Social Mobility: The Irish Experience

In this paper we examine the consequences for social mobility patterns of the unprecedented period of economic growth experienced in Ireland over the 1990s and the implications of developments for current theories of social fluidity. Contrary to suggestions that the ?Celtic Tiger? experience has been associated with a deepening problem of marginalization we found evidence for a substantial upgrading of the class structure and increased levels of social mobility. We also found evidence for increased social fluidity in relation to long-range hierarchical mobility. Such increased openness could not be explained by changes in the manner in which education mediates the relationship between origins and destinations. There is no necessary relationship between economic growth and social fluidity. However, the pattern of change over time in the Irish case suggests that both long-term factors associated with the upgrading of the class structure and short-term factors reflected in the unprecedented tightness of the labour market have produced a situation where employers have increasingly applied criteria other than education in a manner that has facilitated increased social fluidity. The Irish case provides further support to the argument for reconsidering the balance that mobility research has struck between social fluidity and absolute mobility and encouraging increased attention to the evolution of firms and jobs. It also provides support for the conclusion, that in circumstances where policies in advanced industrial societies have shown an increasing tendency to diverge, increased social fluidity may come about as a consequence of very different economic and social policies.

Reassessing Income and Deprivation Approaches to the Measurement of Poverty in the Republic of Ireland

This paper reassesses the validity of a poverty measure combining relative income and non-monetary deprivation indicators, first developed and applied to Irish data for 1987, in the light of experience since then and current debates. A crucial issue is whether the measure has failed to capture fundamental changes in livings patterns and expectations. A range of analyses confirm that it continues to identify a set of households experiencing distinctive levels of generalised deprivation, economic strain, psychological distress and exposure to persistent income poverty.

Fundamental problems in the philosophy of science

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityThe purpose of this thesis is to examine a selected group of problems fundamental to the philosophy of science. The functions of philosophy and science are briefly examined and several views are considered. This leads to a definition of the philosophy of science as the critical examination of the presuppositions, methods, and concepts of science, the examination of the relations of the special branches of science to each other and to other fields of study, and the integration of the discoveries of science into the total picture of human experience. The epistemological problem is considered, the discussion being centered around the problem of the external. Pearson's view is considered and is shown to lead to an almost unavoidable solipsism. The discussion attempts to show that almost any method of accounting for the existence of an external world by an examination of the facts of consciousness implicitly assumes the existence of the external world. The conclusion seems to be that the existence of an external world, although unprovable, is an unavoidable postulate. The principle of induction is examined briefly as a method of gaining knowledge of the external world. As a principle by means of which a degree of probable truth can be assigned to a general proposition or hypothesis even though it is only possible to verify the truth of the proposition empirically in a limited number of actual cases, the principle of induction seems to be another unprovable, but unavoidable, postulate. The problem of the reality of the objects of scientific concepts is considered. A major portion of the discussion centers around the meaning of scientific concepts according to several views. This is done by examining the extent to which the data and the knowing operations determine the formation of a concept according to the various views. Pearson's view is examined, in which scientific concepts are found to be chiefly aids in the classification of the data of science. This view is criticized as being too passive. Bridgman's more recent form of positivism is examined and is found to be much more satisfactory than that of Pearson. Bridgman's operationalism represents the views of a large group of modern scientists in their attitude toward the concepts of science, but as a form of positivism it is perhaps open to criticism as a philosophical point of view. Poincare's conventionalism is examined and is found to give perhaps the most meaningful account of the scientific concepts that are contained in the structure of physical knowledge in its purest form. In this view, in contrast to Pearson's and Bridgman's views, the knowing operations take on a highly significant role in the formation of scientific concepts. The view of the scientific realists is not very different from that of the modified positivists such as Poincare except that for the realists the knowing operations are essentially acts of discovery instead of acts of invention or creation as they are for the modified positivists. Eddington's view is presented as being perhaps the most rationalistic of any view of scientific concepts. The more strict forms of positivism such as is found in Pearson and Bridgman are found to be in danger of falling into a solipsism from a philosophical point of view with regard to the reality of the objects the concepts are supposed to described. Poincare admits a certain amount of subjectivity in scientific concepts and holds that the only knowable reality is that which exists in the relations between the objects, not in the objects themselves. The realists, on the other hand, perhaps go too far in their faith in the reality of the objects. The concept of causality is examined as a particular example of a scientific concept. Basically it seems to be that concept in the structure of scientific knowledge which describes, or represents, the observed uniformity in the processes of the physical universe. Several formulations of the concept are examined and found to be inadequate. The formulation that was adopted states that causality may be said to exist, or be operating, whenever a given state A is always followed by the same state B. The states may then be said to be causally connected. The concept of causality is itself a definition of the term "state" in the sense that only those states that are causally connected may be subject to scientific study. The significance of the rise of modern quantum theory is briefly examined to illustrate the meaning of the concept of causality. The controversy between the determinists and the indeterminists is briefly examined but no attempt is made to decide between the two views. The problem of free will is considered, with the discussion centering around the meaning of the concept of causality as it is applied to the area of human behavior. The position of the incomplete determinist is examined and is found to be irrefutable in the last analysis, but unsatisfactory since it offers no positive results. An attempt is made to establish a view of free will independent of the outcome of the controversy between the indeterminist and the determinist views on the physical world. This view of free will is based on three hypotheses: (1) Mental states can affect physical states; (2) There exists a certain amount of indeterminacy in mental states; (3) The individual possesses the power to introduce into an indeterminate mental state factors sufficient to make that situation determinate. This leads to a view of limited human freedom which seems to be in harmony with the concepts of science and offers an account of the experience of freedom subjectively. The discussion turns finally to the metaphysical problem involved in the philosophy of science. The metaphysical considerations involved in the problem of the external world are centered around the mind-body problem but the discussion is too brief to warrant significant conclusions. The metaphysics, of modern science, positivism, is examined and criticized

Who Feels Inferior? A Test of the Status Anxiety Hypothesis of Social Inequalities in Health. ESRI WP476. January 2014

The empirical association between income inequality, population health and other social problems is now well established and the research literature suggests that the relationship is not artefactual. Debate is still ongoing as to the cause of this association. Wilkinson, Marmot and colleagues have argued for some time that the relationship stems from the psycho-social effects of status comparisons. Here, income inequality is a marker of a wider status hierarchy that provokes an emotional stress response in individuals that is harmful to health and well-being. We label this the ‘status anxiety hypothesis’. If true, this would imply a structured relationship between income inequality at the societal level, individual income rank and anxiety relating to social status. This paper sets out strong and weak forms of the hypothesis and then presents three predictions concerning the structuring of ‘status anxiety’ at the individual level, given different levels of national income inequality and varying individual income. We then test these predictions using data from a cross-national survey of over 34,000 individuals carried out in 2007 in 31 European countries. Respondents from low inequality countries reported less status anxiety than those in higher inequality countries at all points on the income rank curve. This is an important precondition of support for the status anxiety hypothesis and may be seen as providing support for the weaker version of the hypothesis. However, we do not find evidence to support a stronger version of the hypothesis which we argue requires the negative effect of income rank on status anxiety to be exacerbated by increasing income inequality

Explaining Social Class Differentials in Smoking: The Role of Education

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 differentials cannot account for the wide social class inequalities in mortality and morbidity in these countries, they are a contributing factor. This paper argues that the social structuring of smoking rates suggests that social and economic processes may have a major role in starting and quitting behaviour. We test four hypotheses: The first holds that social class differentials in smoking reflect the direct impact of different levels of knowledge about the risks of smoking across educational groups. The second that social class differences reflect the indirect affect of educational differentials acting through educations influence on risk perception and future orientation. The third hypothesis also invokes future orientation, but attributes differences in this variable to socio-economic disadvantage. The last hypothesis holds that differential rates of smoking across social classes actually reflects the indirect affect of social deprivation on the ‘push’ factors to smoke such as lack of control and psychological stress. Our analyses shows little support for the first hypothesis with knowledge differences accounting for no more than 10% of the class differential. Tests of the role of future orientation show that this plays almost no role. The last hypothesis gains most support. Measures of disadvantage and deprivation account for half of the differential in class smoking

Moving in and out of Poverty: the Impact of Welfare Regimes on Poverty Dynamics in the EU. EPAG Working Paper 30, 2002

Though many of the debates around social exclusion and cumulative disadvantage relate to processes that occur across time, there has been relatively little research into poverty dynamics except in a few notable countries such as Britain, the US and Germany. This neglect is almost entirely because of the absence of comparative longitudinal data on income for other countries, but is regrettable given the central importance of this area. By studying poverty dynamics we not only get a better insight into the processes leading to patterns of disadvantage and inequality, but can also understand better the influence of different welfare state regimes on the social risks experienced by different types of individuals and households. The extent to which different national contexts protect their citizens from poverty persistence, or vary in the factors leading to it tells us a great deal about the workings of their socioeconomic systems and welfare regimes. In this paper we use the recent availability of five waves of the European Community Household Panel Survey to outline the nature of poverty persistence and poverty dynamics across a large number of countries. In doing so we ask three important questions. First, is poverty a more common experience when viewed longitudinally rather than cross-sectionally and how is this affected by the income poverty line used? Second, can we identify a tendency toward poverty persistence and does this vary in its extent across countries? Third and lastly, what types of events are more likely to lead to entry into and exit from poverty and does the importance of these events differ between countries? The paper shows that the experience of poverty is far wider than is appreciated from cross-sectional data, but also tends to be more concentrated on a particular population than would be expected from cross-sectional rates. Moreover, the pattern of poverty persistence is congruent with welfare regime theory. The importance of country institutions and welfare regimes is also underlined by the finding that social welfare and market incomes play different roles in poverty transitions across countries and that Southern European, or residualist welfare regimes focus poverty risks on the experience of the household’s primary earner to a far greater extent than do Northern European Welfare States

Class Transformation, Qualification Inflation and the Persistence of Class: Trends in Social Fluidity in the Republic of Ireland 1973 to 1994. ESRI WP123. November 1999

One of the central themes of social mobility research to date has been the validity of the ‘industrialization thesis’ as propounded by Lipset & Bendix (1959) and Blau & Duncan (1967). This held that economically advanced societies would share a high level of social mobility because this was necessary for these types of societies to function. Such uniformly high rates of mobility would come about they argued, first because these societies spawned a large number of higher managerial and professional positions, but also because these positions would be filled on the basis of meritocratic and ‘universalistic’ principles rather than social position and family connections. The former directs attention to changes in absolute mobility rates while the latter leads to a focus on relative rates. Yet, although numerous tests of this thesis have presented contrary evidence, almost all have used data from countries that have already reached industrial maturity. It could be argued that these data do not permit a full test of the industrialization thesis since they do not allow us to compare mobility patterns in the same country before and after the ‘great transformation’ (Polanyi 1957). A possible exception to this are studies on the Republic of Ireland1 which underwent Industrialisation particularly rapidly and comparatively recently since transition was still underway in the early 1970s. However, even these studies have examined possible changes in social fluidity between cohorts, or within individual careers and have not compared fluidity between data sets collected at different points in time using individuals who would have experienced different structural conditions

ECONOMIC BOOM AND SOCIAL MOBILITY: THE IRISH EXPERIENCE. ESRI WP154. June 2004

In this paper we examine the consequences for social mobility patterns of the unprecedented period of economic growth experienced in Ireland over the 1990s and the implications of developments for current theories of social fluidity. Contrary to suggestions that the “Celtic Tiger” experience has been associated with a deepening problem of marginalization we found evidence for a substantial upgrading of the class structure and increased levels of social mobility. We also found evidence for increased social fluidity in relation to long-range hierarchical mobility. Such increased openness could not be explained by changes in the manner in which education mediates the relationship between origins and destinations. There is no necessary relationship between economic growth and social fluidity. However, the pattern of change over time in the Irish case suggests that both long-term factors associated with the upgrading of the class structure and short-term factors reflected in the unprecedented tightness of the labour market have produced a situation where employers have increasingly applied criteria other than education in a manner that has facilitated increased social fluidity. The Irish case provides further support to the argument for reconsidering the balance that mobility research has struck between social fluidity and absolute mobility and encouraging increased attention to the evolution of firms and jobs. It also provides support for the conclusion, that in circumstances where policies in advanced industrial societies have shown an increasing tendency to diverge, increased social fluidity may come about as a consequence of very different economic and social policies

Targeting Poverty: Lessons from Monitoring Ireland's National Anti-Poverty Strategy. ESRI WP117. July 1999

In 1997 the Irish Government adopted the National Anti-Poverty Strategy (NAPS), a global target for the reduction of poverty which illuminates a range of issues relating to official poverty targets. The Irish target is framed in terms of a relative poverty measure incorporating both relative income and direct measures of deprivation based on data on the extent of poverty from 1994. Since 1994 Ireland has experienced an unprecedented period of economic growth that makes it particularly important to assess whether the target has been achieved, but in doing so we cannot avoid asking some underlying questions about how poverty should be measured and monitored over time. After briefly outlining the nature of the NAPS measure, this article examines trends in poverty in Ireland between 1987 and 1997. Results show that the relative income and deprivation components of the NAPS measure reveal differential trends with increasing relative income poverty, but decreasing deprivation. However, this differential could be due to the fact that the direct measures of deprivation upon which NAPS is based have not been updated to take account of changes in real living standards and increasing expectations. To test whether this is so, we examine the extent to which expectations about living standards and the structure of deprivation have changed over time using confirmatory factor analysis and tests of criterion validity using different definitions of deprivation. Results show that the combined income and deprivation measure, as originally constituted continues to identify a set of households experiencing generalised deprivation resulting from a lack of resources