IRELAND's INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Brian Nolan and Timothy M. Smeeding

Review of Income and Wealth, 2005, vol. 51, issue 4, 537-560

Abstract: 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 distribution changed and how it compares to other rich countries. We begin with OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) and the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data to compare Ireland's degree of well‐being and inequality with other advanced countries. We also look in some detail at alternative sources of Irish income and their implications for the trends in income inequality in Ireland from 1994 to 2000. For instance, we examine the top of the distribution using data from the administration of the income tax system. We conclude that the spectacular economic growth in the past decade has seen the gap in average income between Ireland and the richer OECD countries narrow dramatically. However, this growth has not greatly affected the Irish ranking in terms of income inequality. Ireland remains an outlier among rich European nations in its high degree of income inequality, though still falling well short of the level seen in the United States. In the end, we find that Ireland's new‐found prosperity provides a “social dividend,” and choices about how it is used will fundamentally affect whether the current high level of income inequality persists into the future.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4991.2005.00167.x

Related works:
Working Paper: Ireland's Income Distribution in Comparative Perspective (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:revinw:v:51:y:2005:i:4:p:537-560

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0034-6586

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Income and Wealth is currently edited by Conchita D'Ambrosio and Robert J. Hill

More articles in Review of Income and Wealth from International Association for Research in Income and Wealth Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().