Researching Children’s Outcomes: An All-Island Approach

Researching Children’s Outcomes: An All-Island Approach

Date: 26 September 2012

Venue: Chartered Acountants House, 47 Pearse Street, Dublin 2

Researching Children’s Outcomes: An All-Island Approach is a conference that aims to bring together researchers to consider the merits of, opportunities for, and challenges to, all-island research on children’s outcomes using existing data.

Call for Posters

The deadline for the receipt of poster submissions is this FRIDAY 31st August 2012. 

Poster abstract submissions on the conference theme are now invited. This opportunity allows you to present and discuss your work, either a research study or work in progress. Posters are particularly welcome on the following themes:

• Children’s educational outcomes
• Children’s health outcomes
• Children’s behavioural outcomes
• Comparing children’s outcomes across jurisdictions
• Translating research on children’s outcomes into policy and practice.

For more details and the form for submitting poster abstracts  see the attached document.

This is an essential event for everyone involved in children's research on the island of Ireland. The conference programme has been put together to encourage networking and also to engage people in discussion. It also provides an interactive forum with poster submissions and a pre conference questions forum. For more information and to book your place click here.

Postfamine stature and socioeconomic status in Ireland

Postfamine stature and socioeconomic status in Ireland

American Journal of Human Biology, Volume 20, Issue 6, pages 726–731, November/December 2008

Kristin Young, John H. Relethford, Michael H. Crawford

Abstract

Previous research has documented socioeconomic stratification of secular trend in height in historical populations. Using data from 4,900 males and 1,430 females born between 1840 and 1910 collected as part of the Harvard Anthropological Survey of Ireland (1934–1936), this study examined the secular changes in postfamine Ireland using several socioeconomic variables, including: occupation, migration, education, siblings, birthplace, and occupation of father and mother's father. Correlations were also calculated between height and various historical economic indices. Significant differences in the height of Irish males were found by occupation, education, and socioeconomic status of father and maternal grandfather. Males employed in agriculture, or whose fathers or grandfathers were so employed, were significantly taller than other males. For the smaller female sample, only occupation and grandfather's socioeconomic status had a significant impact on height. An inverse correlation was also found between the British Cost of Living Index (BCL) and male heights. Our results suggest that availability of resources plays an important role in the overall nutritional status reflected in terminal adult height.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajhb.20807/abstract

Can a Country's Online 'Mood' Predict Unemployment Spikes?

"SAS and United Nations Global Pulse have learned that social media chatter and conversation sentiment could warn of pending unemployment increases and inform policymakers of likely effects. Analyzing half a million blogs, forums and news sites, SAS(R) Social Media Analytics and SAS Text Miner examined two years of social media data from the US and Ireland for references to unemployment and how people were coping."

More from the WSJ here.

The Changing Faces of Ireland

Steve Song (formerly of Geary and now with George Fox University, Oregon), Merike Darmody (ESRI) and Naomi Tyrrell (Plymouth) are the editors of a new book on immigration in Ireland.

The Changing Faces of Ireland: Exploring the Lives of Immigrant and Ethnic Minority Children

“Before the economic boom of the 1990s, Ireland was known as a nation of emigrants. The past fifteen years, however, have seen the transformation of Ireland from a country of net emigration to one of net immigration, on a scale and at a pace unprecedented in comparative context. As a result, Irish society has become more diverse in terms of nationality, language, ethnicity and religious affiliation; and these changes are now clearly reflected in the composition of both primary and secondary schools, presenting these with challenges as well as opportunities. Despite the increased number of ethnically-diverse immigrant children and young people in the Ireland, currently there is a paucity of information about aspects of their lives in Ireland. This book is aimed at contributing to this gap in knowledge.

This edited collection will be of interest to researchers in the fields of migration studies, childhood studies, education studies, human geography, sociology, applied social studies, social work, health studies and psychology. It will also be a useful resource to educators, social workers, youth workers and community members working with (or preparing to work with) children with immigrant and ethnic minority backgrounds in Ireland.”

More details.

Revealed Preferences in Voting Behaviour

From RTE: Moriarty Tribunal report - The main points

Data on the Tipp North constituency from ElectionsIreland.org:

General Election 2011		Party	1st Pref Votes	Share	Quota
Michael Lowry Snr		Independent	14,104	29.22%	1.17
Noel J Coonan		Fine Gael	11,425	23.67%	0.95
Alan Kelly		Labour	9,559	19.80%	0.79
General Election 2007
Michael Lowry Snr		Independent	12,919	29.08%	1.16
Noel J Coonan		Fine Gael	7,061	15.89%	0.64
Maire Hoctor		Fianna Fail	7,374	16.60%	0.66
General Election 2002
Michael Lowry Snr		Independent	10,400	25.39%	1.02
Maire Hoctor		Fianna Fail	8,949	21.84%	0.87
Michael Smith		Fianna Fail	8,526	20.81%	0.83
General Election 1997
Michael Lowry Snr		Independent	11,638	29.13%	1.17
Michael O'Kennedy		Fianna Fail	9,895	24.77%	0.99
Michael Smith		Fianna Fail	6,999	17.52%	0.7

Next generation Ireland

This book looks interesting and has a nice cover: Next Generation Ireland (editors Ed Burke, Ronan Lyons) tackles the essential challenges confronting Irish politics and society, the economy, the environment, and Ireland’s relationship with the rest of the world. It brings together ten young Irish men and women to answer the fundamental question, 'What now?'
Ireland in the early 2010s stands at a crossroads. The ongoing change and crisis in institutions that once had our trust force us to ask, ‘What now?’
Next Generation Ireland brings together ten young Irish men and women to answer this very question. All are under forty and are emerging experts in their chosen fields. They have come together because they believe that, in this time of questioning, there exists a huge opportunity for the next generation to build the Ireland of the 2020s and 2030s.
The book tackles the essential challenges confronting Irish politics and society, the economy, the environment, and Ireland’s relationship with the rest of the world. Each writer proposes transformative policies in their respective areas that will renew and sustain the Irish state in the coming decades.
Urging reform and policy transformation, Next Generation Ireland marks the beginning of an interesting conversation. Do you wish to participate?

Contributors include: Eoin O’Malley, Michael Courtney, Stephen Kinsella, Michael King, Joseph Curtin, Aoibhín de Búrca, Neil Sands and Nicola White.

Diabetes In Ireland

This is purely for illustration (due to relatively small numbers (~750) , and I'm mixing data from two waves), but it at least seems that diabetes is more common in Leinster. The overall rate of 7-8% seems low to me, at least for this age cohort (over 50s). I've also broken down the rate by type of area. Again not to be taken too seriously, the confidence intervals are wide. The data is from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe see www.share-project.org. The full panel data set comprises over 30,000 individuals across Europe, has modules on too many domains to mention here, and is a fantastic resource for anyone interesed in social science. A summary of the Irish results from the first wave is available here. Data collection for a life history wave has just been completed.

Type Of Area Of Residence	Diabetes Prevalence Rate
A Big City	0.11
The Suburbs Or Outskirts Of A Big City	0.07
A Large Town	0.07
A Small Town	0.12
A Rural Area Or Village	0.06
Average	0.07

Michael Lewis VF Article on Ireland

Philip Lane links to the VF article on Ireland. There wont be much in here that will come as a big surprise to readers who have been following the Irish situation for the last few years. However, it is a very well-written and evocative piece, with some brilliant cameos, particularly by Colm McCarthy.

BMJ: Judging Nudging

An article in the current issue of the BMJ asks whether nudging can improve population health.

It provides a good overview of the topic and interventions in the area of public health. It is largely positive but bemoans the lack of evidence on the effectiveness (and cost-effectiveness) of such interventions. The adjoined ed note attempts to explain the new political interest in nudge-policy in the UK, though this seems rather cynical. Without asserting anything about the motives of the current UK government, I believe they deserve credit for their willingness to engage with fresh thinking and approaches to age-old human problems.

Here in Ireland, although nudge philosophy and practice seems to have permeated some sections of social policy, most notably in the area pensions, there remains a complete dearth of such thinking in the health policy domain; which largely focuses on issues surrounding the delivery of emergency and restorative medical care. The idea that health and illness is fundamentally rooted in life outside of our hospital waiting rooms and GP clinics has never been given serious political, or media, attention. These innovative ideas of using policy to actively sustain, and maintain health in our everyday lives seems to have, so far, attracted little or no attention in Ireland.

Nov 18th: IMF Arriving at Terminal 2, Dublin Airport

(HT: Cathal G)

How would you like it done Sir? Harsh or Severe?

The UK government announced its austerity package today; it’s harsh. But how does it size-up to Irelands plans-in-the-making? Opposition members in the HOC were quick to point to Ireland and our governments belief that we could cut our way out of the economic problem; Brian Lenihan’s we’ve turned a corner speech last year was the focal point of their ridicule.

Such ridicule, if heeded, may be good for Ireland; it is becoming clear now that Ireland's "misguided austerity" could actually be a key thing that helps Ireland grow! albeit indirectly via less severe global austerity. In any event, I think it is interesting to place the newly announced UK austerity plan in an Irish perspective. In simple capita terms the UK is just shy of being 14 times bigger than Ireland. We can compute some basic figures off this fact to make some quick comparisons. I also think doing so will help put the fairly animated debates in the UK over their cuts into some perspective for us here.

I’ll just run some of today’s headline figures –

UK Public sector four-year austerity package in Irish terms: €7bn

UK Public sector job cuts in Irish terms: 35,000 jobs

UK Welfare cuts in Irish terms: €575m

UK Extra social care in schools in Irish terms: €165m

UK Axing quangos in business, innovation and skills sector in Irish terms: ~ 2 quangos; €30m

Is Ireland Inc. more than a tax haven?

Nobody will doubt the importance of multi-nationals to this country but the question of corporate taxation shouldn't be so sacred. I think it may well be positive to discuss this and consider our options and their implications.

Ireland's friendly enterprise environment drew massive foreign corporate investment here. Our english-speaking European isle with it's young under-employed workforce was an attractive product, and, in case the raw charm of our officials wasn't enough, the government threw in generous state aid and zero-to-low corporation tax. It worked - they're here and we would like them to stay, and invest more. But do we still need to smear ourselves in honey?

Unfortunately, the government seem to be fumbling this one. Ireland really needs to reassess its position and ask itself a few important questions. We're clearly not the backwater we were in the 70s but right now we seem to be squarely mired. We cannot afford to loose our paddles but we cannot sit still for much longer either.

Here's some questions the government should consider before the forthcoming budget: what is ireland's comparative advantage? how sensitive are MNC in ireland to marginal tax adjustments? what shape is the laffer curve here? how can the "four-year plan" be used to best order and communicate (frame) a possible tax increase to have least impact? how can ireland hold and attract foreign investment in the advent of a (~temporary) tax increase? how can ireland best harness and leverage the current agglomerative advantages it has built-up?

Since tax harmonization is an ultimate part of the European project - Ireland should really stop fooling itself about being able to hold Europe back on this issue. Consider our No votes to treaties in the past, at a time when we were must less obviously dependent on the Union. The country should prepare for the inevitable and start planning to compete on a level international playing field.

Ireland v France

A recent quality of life survey touted by the Guardian newspaper is a perfect example of the need to look behind the statistic headline. The headline reads the UK and Ireland are the worst places in Europe to live, and France is amongst the best. You can see how this might conjure some suspicion given Ireland's perennial heights in self-rated QOL surveys and France's perennial problem with strikes - as a case in point I believe the city of Paris is on foot today due to an all out train strike there! Interestingly, one aspect of the questionable index is age of retirement...

The index also magically (!) mixes together hours of work, holidays, GDP per capita, VAT rates, fuel-, alcohol-, tobacco-, and food-prices, life-expectancy and hours of sunshine.. but what really makes the caldron bubble is government spending on health and education. where more spending is unquestionably good.

Criticism on the complied score and resulting rankings aside, the scores on the individual aspects measured are new and provide an interesting and useful snapshot for quick comparisons.

ESRI Seminar: Stability of Economic Voting in Ireland

ESRI Seminar: "Stability of Economic Voting in Ireland"

Venue: The ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2
Date: 16/09/2010
Time: 4 p.m.
Speaker: Michael Marsh (TCD)

This paper takes a long run perspective to examine the stability of a popularity function and possible contextual reasons for that stability/instability. It uses new data to estimate a popularity function for the dominant Irish party, Fianna Fail, (FF) for the period 1974-2010, a much longer period than is covered in any previous analysis.

While FF has remained the dominant party over this period, the economy has run the full gamut from bust to boom and back again. The authors find that the effect of objective economic indicators and subjective perceptions of the economy is differential over whether FF is in government or in opposition.

More Details

R&D and Ireland - Links: 27th July

1. Comparing Academic Entrepreneurship in Europe: The Case of Sweden and Ireland (Magnus Klofsten and Dylan Jones-Evans: Small Business Economics 14: 299–309, 2000)

2. National innovation policy and performance: Comparing the small island countries of Taiwan and Ireland (Grace T.R. Lin, Yung-Chi Shena and James Choua: Technology in Society Volume 32, Issue 2, May 2010, Pages 161-172)

3. Contribution of basic research to the Irish national innovation system (Arnold E. and Thuriaux B.: Science and Public Policy, Volume 28, Number 2, 1 April 2001 , pp. 86-98(13))

4. Ireland's National Innovation System: An Exploratory Study of Supporting Institutions and Dynamic Actors (Dimitrios Pontikakis; Thomas McDonnell; Will Geoghegan: Prometheus, Volume 24, Issue 1 March 2006 , pages 37 - 58)

5. Science: Celtic Strength: Science in Ireland

6. Paul Tansey: Productivity: Ireland’s Economic Imperative

7. Publicly Funded R&D and Economic Development in Northern Ireland (Northern Ireland Economic Council: Report 133: December 1999)

HESG Summer Conference

The Health Economists´ Study Group  is a UK organisation for people working in Health Economics. However, the group's summer conference is being hosted by University College Cork this summer. The first time, to my knowledge, it's been held in Ireland. The 'study' nature of the group encourages participation by PhD students, i.e., preference will be given to work-in-progress and PhD students and all Health Economics topics will be considered.

Location: Jury´s Cork Hotel, Cork, Ireland

Dates: 23-25 June 2010

Deadline for Abstract Submission: 9th April 2010

Deadline for Early Registration: 11th May 2010

Please send a title and abstract of up to 250 words of the proposed content by 9th April 2010 5pm if you wish to have a paper considered. Please submit abstracts by e-mail, with a subject header HESG ABSTRACT and include the abstract in the BODY of the message to: hesg2010@ucc.ie

The HESG meeting will follow its standard format with papers submitted in advance, introduced and reviewed by a discussant other than the author.

Some Irish Demographic History

Anyone with an interest in Irish demographic history will like this one:

Sourced from the ESRI Family Figures (2010) report. Well worth a read!

I'm interested in singlehood and couple formation in Ireland, and more specifically, the economic and social factors that mediate it. Ireland has some fairly unique historical rates and patterns in this area - nineteenth century (post-famine) was predominantly characterised by remarkably low marriage rates but with very high fertility rates (observed by Joe Lee: Modernisation of Irish Society; 1848-1918). I'm not familiar with any analysis of this.

Here we see the variability in marriage (inc. common law marriages) rates for the 20th century which shows the increase in family formation through the early and mid twentieth century, up to 1980. Now, it seems marriage rates (people aged 25-35) or singlehood rates are returning to the rates of the Victorian era.

I'd be interested to hear you thoughts on this. I'm working on a theory..

Ireland after NAMA Blog

a new irish blog led by geographers. some very good posts so far with excellent data and graphics.

link here 

Beyond Diabolic Governance in Hyperbolic Ireland

An incisive article in the SBP by Prof. Ed Walsh that tackles head-on one of the biggest and most blatant problems in the country - effective governance. The current dismal economic situation is expressed as a result of mismanagement and it is made clear that without constitutional reform we're unlikely to be headed anywhere better.

The specific reform proposed is changing the electoral process to a List System:

"whereby members of parliament are elected partially from local constituencies and partially from party lists of individuals who have proven records of distinguished national and international achievement: many from business and the professions"

Such a system would increase the pool of management talent and their ability to govern by quelling incentives for the all too common and clearly retrogressive process of myopic pandering to local constituents for re-election. I fully agree that Ministers need to focus on the major national issues and plan strategically for a better future - difficult and unpalatable decisions need to be made in the next few months and years to steady the county and secure prosperity for the future. Walsh essentially makes the point that if our constitution is preventing this, we need to change it.

Some interesting points in the article:

"Our system ... deters the government from moving swiftly and taking difficult decisions.... the pool from which a Taoiseach draws when forming a government is limited indeed, because in effect it bypasses leaders of enterprise and the professions with the necessary strategic management skills and experience...”

“Our system … draws over 80 per cent of the Oireachtas from a group of some 1,000 people: the members of local authorities. While a county or city council would certainly be a source of pleasant and well-intentioned people it would be an unlikely source of the experienced talent required to strategically guide national policy and effectively manage a multibillion budget"

"The Oireachtas has not risen to the occasion by conveying a new seriousness appropriate to these dangerous times; rather it has continued the pursuit of trivia and political bloodsports in a raucous way that has not enhanced its standing."

".... the quality of national governance can not exceed the quality of those who govern."

Randomised Evaluation of a Parenting Programme

Donal O'Neill presented at the economics seminar on Friday. He has a new working paper on an early childhood intervention in Ireland.



A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Early Childhood Intervention: Evidence from a Randomised Evaluation of a Parenting Programme
by Donal O'Neill (October 2009)

Abstract:
A number of researchers and policy makers have recently argued that the most effective way of dealing with long-run disadvantage and the intergenerational transmission of poverty is through early childhood intervention and in particular policies aimed at supporting the family in early childhood development. In this paper we carry out a randomised evaluation of one such programme aimed at improving the skills and parenting strategies of parents, particularly those who find their child's behaviour difficult or challenging. Our evaluation shows that the treatment significantly reduced behavioural problems in young children when measured 6 months after the intervention. Furthermore our detailed cost analysis, combined with a consideration of the potential long-run benefits associated with the programme, suggest that the long-run rate of return to society from this programme is likely to be relatively high.