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We study the effects of robot penetration on income inequality in 14 European countries between 2006-2018, a period of rapid adoption of robots. We first use the approach proposed by Acemoglu and Restrepo (2022) to show that, similarly to the US, automation reduced hourly wages and employment in Western Europe, but had no significant effect in Eastern Europe, where labor costs have been noticeably lower. We then use the estimated wage and employment shocks as input to the EUROMOD microsimulation model to assess how robot-driven shocks affected household income inequality. Automation widened income inequality in European countries, but its contribution was very small, about one percent of the recorded change in the Gini index in this period. European countries’ tax and benefit systems absorbed wage and employment shocks caused by automation. Benefits played a larger role, especially in Western Europe. Welfare states appear more effective in mitigating the effects of automation in Europe than in the US.

This note uses a unique dataset for Germany which contains interviewer-rated physical appearance assessments of survey respondents both before and after the interview to address three questions. Firstly, after the first impression of an individual's physical appearance, what characteristics make people appear more or less attractive to interviewers? We find that these differ widely by respondent gender. Second, how does this second impression vary by interviewer characteristics? We note differences by interview gender, education and age which has implications for the design of surveys which attempt to abstract "objective" measures of respondent characteristics from interviewers. Lastly, is the first impression of physical appearance most important in determining income or is there also a role for the second impression? Here we find that while it is the first impression which matters, the correlation between interviewer-rated attractiveness and income is higher if it is recorded by somebody of the same gender.

The relationship between health and employment status continually shows that individuals who work have lower levels of illness and higher self-reported health. This study examines how self-reported health and objective measures of health (multimorbidity and mental health problems) differ across employment status and occupations among adults of working age (25-65 years). In addition, the study examines how public health coverage - medical card and GP visit card (GPVC) - and private health coverage (PHI), and lack thereof, differ across occupations. Overall, individuals not in employment have much lower rates of self-reported health and higher rates of illness. In particular, mental health problems are three times higher among unemployed individuals across all age groups. Examining workers separately, differences in health status across occupations are small. However, rates of health coverage differ considerably across occupations. In general, occupations associated with poorer health status tend to have the highest percentages of workers without a medical card/GPVC or PHI. This affects workers' ability to access lower cost or free healthcare, including for the purpose of certified sick leave.

We document the development and operation of the SWITCH model, Ireland's taxbenefit microsimulation model. Using the EUROMOD platform and process of creating an input model, we discuss adjustments to the underlying data, such as reweighting and uprating, aiming at improving representativeness in terms of the income tax base and beneficiaries of social welfare schemes. The validation of the model with respect to a range of external sources as well as the capabilities of the model in terms of results produced is also described.

A significant literature in the social sciences addresses the impact of child-bearing and rearing on marital stability and on mothers' labour market outcomes. Much less is known about older mothers' employment and marriage patterns when the adult children leave the parental nest. This study aims to shed light on these issues using longitudinal labour force data for France. Exploiting retirement laws for identification purposes, and taking a regression discontinuity approach, we find that older women's retirement probability is positively associated with an empty nest. We also conclude that an empty nest is negatively associated with older mothers' marriage probability. There is scope for better targeting of both family and retirement policies for older mothers during those critical years when adult children leave the parental nest.

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.

A significant literature in the social sciences addresses the impact of child-bearing and rearing on marital stability and on mothers’ labour market outcomes. Much less is known about older mothers’ employment and marriage patterns when the adult children leave the parental nest. This study aims to shed light on these issues using longitudinal labour force data for France. Exploiting retirement laws for identification purposes, and taking a regression discontinuity approach, we find that older women’s retirement probability is positively associated with an empty nest. We also conclude that an empty nest is negatively associated with older mothers’ marriage probability. There is scope for better targeting of both family and retirement policies for older mothers during those critical years when adult children leave the parental nest.

Successive reports have put childcare costs in Ireland at among the highest in the OECD. In this paper, we investigate the usage and cost of childcare in Ireland, profiling those experiencing high childcare costs by income quintile; family type and number and age of children. We show how the National Childcare Scheme is likely to improve the affordability of childcare in Ireland while pointing out features of the scheme that may disincentivise work. Lastly, we simulate a number of reforms to the National Childcare Scheme, showing how affordability and incentives to work are likely to be affected by the alteration of specific parameters of the subsidy.

COVID-19 had, and continues to have, a strong negative effect on incomes in Ireland due to widespread job losses as the measures put in place to slow the spread of the disease resulted in severe economic restrictions. Despite the existence of unemployment supports, additional income supports were introduced to protect incomes. As public health restrictions lift and the economy recovers, we face the withdrawal of such supports. We examine these supports and the role they played in supporting incomes. By profiling those who benefitted most from the new schemes, we highlight the groups most at risk of significant income losses as they wind down. We consider what gaps in the social welfare system necessitated the introduction of such schemes in the first place, along with potential future policy changes to ensure that the social welfare system can provide adequate income protection and financial incentives to work as we emerge from the COVID-19 crisis.

This paper estimates the raw and adjusted gender pay gap in Ireland between 2011 and 2018, a period of austerity measures and recovery from the Great Recession. Using survey data sources linked to administrative information on earnings, we show that the raw gender wage gap across the wage distribution has not changed much over this period: it is larger for higher earners and is mainly concentrated in the private sector. Using a Distribution Regression method, we estimate the relative contributions of explained and unexplained components to the overall gender wage gap at each point at the wage distribution and summarise the findings by wage quantile. The explained gender wage gap is negative, indicating that women have better labour market characteristics than men, on average. The unexplained gender wage gap is positive and increases with the wage level. This results in a small or zero gender wage gap at the bottom of the wage distribution which rises to 10% at the top of the wage distribution. The stability of the gender pay gap across the wage distribution in the private sector over the period suggest the strong structural inequalities, that are unlikely to change without significant interventions

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.

There are two main sources of data on income distribution. Household based surveys report mainly on inequality in equivalised household level disposable income. Top income shares, on the other hand, focus on the tax unit as the unit of analysis, because administrative records are obtained from such units. Tax return data is typically analysed in terms of unequvalised fiscal income and obtains better coverage of those at the very top of the income distribution. In this paper, we find that differences in concepts and measures play a very substantial role in accounting for the divergence in the pictures of inequality arising from household and tax return data. Estimates of the share of the top 10% of tax units in fiscal income from the two sources are quite close. Average incomes for the top 1% of the population appear to be substantially higher in tax return data than in SILC - a pattern that has often been observed internationally. We conclude that there is a strong case for examining potential adjustments to survey data to ensure better representation of income levels at the very top of the income distribution.

The gender wage gap and the gender work gap are sizable, persistent and well documented for many countries. The result of the gender wage and gender work gap combined is an income gap between men and women. A small literature has begun to examine how the tax-benefit system contributes to closing gender income gaps by redistributing between men and women. In this paper, we study the effect of tax-benefit policy on gender differences in income. We use microsimulation models linked to survey data to estimate gender gaps in market income (before taxes and transfers) and disposable income (after taxes and transfers) for each country. We develop a method to isolate the relative contributions of the gender wage gap and the gender work gap to the overall gap in income between men and women. We then decompose the difference between the gender gap in market income and the gender gap in disposable income into (i) the relative contribution of taxes and benefits in each country and (ii) the relative cushioning of the gender wage gap and gender work gap. Policy conclusions are drawn about redistribution between men and women.

We use distributional regression analysis to study the impact of a six percent increase in the Irish minimum wage on the distribution of hourly wages and household income. Wage inequality, measured by the ratio of wages in the 90th and 10th percentiles and the 75th and 25th percentiles, decreased by approximately eight percent and four percent respectively. For young workers, aged under 25, the effects were far greater, with a 24 percent reduction in the ratio of wages in the 90th and 10th percentiles. The results point towards wage spillover effects up to the 30th percentile of the wage distribution. We show that minimum wage workers are spread throughout the household income distribution and are often located in high-income households. Therefore, while we observe strong effects on the wage distribution, the impact of a minimum wage increase on the household income distribution is quite limited.