This ESRI study, funded by the Low Pay Commission, found that the 2016 increase in the Irish minimum wage reduced hourly wage inequality between high and low earners by up to 8 per cent. However, there was no strong impact on the income of households.

This paper simulates the impact that Covid-19 related job losses will have on family incomes and the public finances. It finds that in the central 'medium' unemployment scenario of 600,000 job losses, around 400,000 families will see their disposable income fall by more than 20 per cent in the absence of policy changes, with proportionately larger losses for those in higher income families. Measures announced by the Government - notably the flat-rate Pandemic Unemployment Payment of €350 per week - reduce the numbers exposed to such extreme losses by about a third, but at significant cost to the Exchequer. The paper also finds that the additional cost of the Government's Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme may be minimal, in part because its current design is less generous to lower earners than the Pandemic Unemployment Payment they would receive if laid off.

Existing research has shown that disability is costly and can result in an increased risk of living in poverty and a decrease in living standards. In this paper, we expand a framework of equality budgeting, previously applied from a gender perspective, to the population of households affected by disability. Using a microsimulation model linked to data from the EU Survey of Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), we show how tax-benefit policy and other market income changes between 2007 and 2019 impacted households affected by disability and households not affected by disability. We find that disposable (or post-tax and transfer) income grew for both types of households but at a faster rate for households affected by disability than households not affected by disability. This income growth was driven by two counteracting forces. On the one hand, tax and welfare policy failed to keep pace with market income growth, reducing the living standards of households affected by disability by more than households not affected by disability. On the other hand, despite having lower average wage levels, wage growth for workers affected by disability outpaced wage growth for workers not affected by disability, while the labour supply of households affected by disability also increased. Future attempts to equality-proof budgetary policy should consider that changes to welfare disproportionally affect households with disabilities.

The cost of childcare has a significant impact on the decision of parents - particularly mothers - to work. Prior to the introduction of subsidies for formal childcare in Ireland in 2019 through the National Childcare Scheme (NCS), the cost of full-time centre-based childcare was among the most expensive in the OECD. Doorley et al. (2021) show that the introduction of the subsidy scheme improved childcare affordability. In this paper, we investigate the effects of the scheme on the labour supply and childcare choices of mothers. We model the joint decision of labour supply and childcare for lone and coupled mothers of children under six. Mothers are likely to respond to the introduction of childcare subsidies in 2019 by switching from informal childcare to formal childcare (11ppt), but not by increasing their participation in the labour market. We estimate that recent (2023) reforms of the NCS, which increase the generosity and the scope of the subsidy, will increase mothers' participation by 3% and full-time work by 4%, but also substantially decrease the demand for informal childcare. A hypothetical abolition of all childcare costs would close the gender employment gap, increasing mothers' participation by 30 ppt.

This paper examines the effect of inheritances on labour supply, distinguishing between unanticipated and anticipated inheritances. We use household and individual level micro-data for Germany to investigate the effect of inheritances on a number of labour market outcomes. Women are less likely to work full-time after an inheritance and their desired and actual hours of work decrease by 1-2 per week, on average. The magnitude of the effect is found to be larger and more precisely estimated for households without children and liquidity constrained households. Other margins such as time use outside the labour market and satisfaction are also found to be affected by inheritance receipt.

The gender income gap is large and well documented for many countries. Recent research shows that it is mainly driven by differences in working patterns between men and women, but also by wage differences. The tax-benefit system cushions the gender income gap by redistributing between men and women. The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in unprecedented levels of unemployment in 2020 in many countries, with some suggestion that men and women have been differently affected. This research investigates the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on the gender gap in income in Ireland. Using nowcasting techniques and microsimulation, we model the effect of pandemic induced employment and wage changes on market and disposable income. We show how the pandemic and the associated tax-benefit support can be expected to change the income gap between men and women. Policy conclusions are drawn about future redistribution between men and women.

Financial literacy is higher for men than for women and high financial literacy has been linked to higher wealth and better retirement planning. However, relatively little is known about the decision making process for retirement savings within couples and about how the gap or interaction between the financial literacy of members of a couple influences their preparation for retirement. This paper investigates the relationship between the financial literacy of members of pre-retirement couples and their level of wealth and financial stress using TILDA data for Ireland. We find that joint financial literacy is more highly correlated with household wealth, particularly real estate, than the financial literacy of individual members of the couple but that, where individual level financial literacy is associated with wealth, it is the financial literacy of the man in the couple which plays the most important role.

We study the effects of robot penetration on household income inequality in 14 European countries between 2006-2018, a period marked by the rapid adoption of industrial robots. Automation reduced relative hourly wages and employment of more exposed demographic groups, similarly to the results for the United States. Using robot-driven wage and employment shocks as input to the EUROMOD microsimulation model, we find that automation had minor effects on income inequality. Household labour income diversification and tax and welfare policies largely absorbed labour market shocks caused by automation. Transfers played a key role in cushioning the transmission of these shocks to household incomes.