Ireland's Income Distribution in Comparative Perspective

Brian Nolan and Timothy Smeeding ()

No 395, LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg

Abstract: 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 unequal distribution of income. This paper examines Irelands income distribution in comparative perspective, and seeks to shed some empirical light on what happened during the boom and how Ireland compares to other rich countries. It begins by using the data from the OECD and the Luxembourg Income Study to compare Irelands degree of income inequality with other advanced countries. It then looks in some detail at what alternative sources of survey data suggest about key trends in income inequality in Ireland from 1994 to 2000. Since there is a particular interest in what happened right at the top of the distribution, this is then examined 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 something an outlier among rich European nations in its high degree of income inequality, though still falling well short of the level seen in the USA. In the end, Irelands 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.

Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2004-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lisdatacenter.org/wps/liswps/395.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: IRELAND's INCOME DISTRIBUTION IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE (2005)
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:lis:liswps:395

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LIS Working papers from LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Piotr Paradowski ().