Survey On Income And Living Conditions Research Articles

12 Older workers in low paid employment in Ireland: finance, fit and flexibility

Abstract Background The demographic shift to an older population has sparked research interest on the working lives of older people. Policy awareness is generally directed towards extending working lives, primarily due to pension related fiscal concerns or evoking an active ageing paradigm. This research focuses on a previously unexplored cohort, older workers in low paid employment in Ireland; bringing together themes of ageing populations, labour market participation, earnings adequacy, and active ageing to answer the question. Why do older workers enter and remain in low paid employment? Methods A mixed-methods approach explores the characteristics and experiences of older workers in Ireland. Quantitative analysis of the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) data provides a profile of the individual, sectoral and household characteristics of low paid older workers. This data informs the qualitative sampling strategy. Semi-structured interviews, online and by phone, were conducted with 20 workers aged 50 and over in Ireland. Results The older workers interviewed indicate that financial need is a significant driver into taking up, and remaining in, low paid employment—some beyond official retirement age. Other reasons identified, broadly categorised as ‘fit and flexibility’, encompass skills, location, social drivers, and a gender dimension related to motherhood. Decisions taken earlier in the life course in relation to employment and family reverberate into older age. Findings indicate that while some older workers are ‘stuck’ in low paid employment due to an array of constraints, others choose to be there. Conclusion Understanding the reasons why older workers participate in low paid employment has important implications for policies relating to older people in general; not only in relation to labour market participation and extended working lives, but additionally in relation to a living wage income and pension inadequacy, wellbeing and social inclusion. These findings therefore are of interest not only to policy makers, but to older workers, employee representatives and employers.

Nezadovoljene potrebe za stomatološkom zdravstvenom zaštitom u Srbiji

Aim: The aim of this study was the analysis of the social and health status characteristics of the population with unmet dental health care needs. Materials and methods: This cross-sectional study included 20,069 respondents from the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) in the Republic of Serbia in 2014. Results: Nearly every sixth citizen (16.1%) reported unmet dental health care needs. Participants between the ages of 27 and 44 years (OR: 1.48, 95% CI: 1.21 - 1.82), and between 45 and 64 years (OR: 1.49, 95% CI: 1.19 - 1.86), participants who assessed their health status as: good (OR: 1.91, 95% CI: 1.63 - 2.25), fair (OR: 3.16, 95% CI: 2.64 - 3.77), bad (OR: 3.65, 95% CI: 2.94 - 4.53), or very bad (OR: 4.22, 95% CI: 3.10 - 5.74), had a higher likelihood of reporting unmet dental health care needs. The most frequent reasons for unmet dental health care needs were financial obstacles to the accessibility of dental health care (66.6%) and fear or treatment (15.1%). Conclusion: The study found associations between unmet dental health care needs and social and health status characteristics. Health policy should adopt a multidimensional approach and eliminate barriers which restrict the accessibility of dental health care.

Razmatranje nove tipologije naselja u Srbiji

A division between urban and rural settlements/areas has been traditionally applied in statistical reporting worldwide. The reports applying these terms have been used to create and implement development policies and measures. However, international policies such as those featured by the European Union (EU), as well as national policies, also recognize, define and render transitional types of settlements. The Program of Implementation of the Spatial Plan of the Republic of Serbia (2010) called for a new definition of the term "settlement" determined by new criteria for a settlement typology by the end of 2015. Except for theoretical contributions, this task has not been completed yet. At the same time, a trichotomous settlement typology has been recommended to Serbia by the EU as a result of the accession process. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze and discuss a new settlement categorization, taking into account considerations on the number of categories, number of variables, choice of variables and territorial level for data collection. These aspects are empirically tested on a data set collected through the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) in Serbia. The data are analyzed using two approaches: descriptive and cluster analysis. A parallel with other countries and theoretical recommendations is drawn in the discussion, based on which some recommendations are presented.

A Mixed Approach for Data Fusion of HBS and SILC

This paper presents an effective procedure for matching data from the Italian Household Budget Survey (HBS) and the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC), carried out by the Italian National Statistical Institute. In recent years, there is an emerging consensus on the need for distributional measures of well-being as a joint function of income and consumption, that should be jointly explored for explaining the households’ economic conditions. However, the Italian National Statistical Institute does not maintain a unified database on income and expenditures for consumption. One of the most widespread approaches for fusing data is to use statistical matching techniques, which are based on the Conditional Independence Assumption. This assumption implies that the variables of interest are independent, given a set of common auxiliary variables with strong explicative power on income and consumption. Between the auxiliary variables, we also exploit suitable variables which are proxy of income, thus permitting to impute income on HBS, and proxy of consumption, thus permitting to impute consumption on SILC. The joint distribution of the proxies can be considered as a proxy of the joint distribution between income and consumption. Moreover, through the use of two synthetic measures, we reduce the dimensionality of the set of auxiliary variables, simultaneously preserving as much as possible of the available common information and the correlation structure between the auxiliaries and income, as observed in SILC, and between the auxiliaries and consumption, as observed in HBS. The contribution to the existing literature is various. In particular, we obtain a pooled sample with income and consumption, while previous attempts aimed at imputing only one of the two variables of interest in one survey. Second, the uncertainty deriving from the lack of information on the joint distribution of income and consumption is reduced with respect to previous works. Finally, the use of proxies, the high quality of the other auxiliary variables, as well as the particular mixed-mode matching procedure, permit to take advantage of all the available information reducing it to only two dimensions, so that the Conditional Independence can be considered a mild assumption. Keeping in mind that an effective matching for also imputing wealth, that is the third pillar of the households’ economic wellbeing, is yet to come, the joined dataset could permit several types of analyses on economic inequalities and fiscal policies.

Gender inequality in self-reported health and its evolution in Europe between 2004 and 2016

Abstract Background That women generally have worse health than men has long been shown. Yet, the situation in Europe might have changed recently. Gender inequalities have decreased in access to education, employment, and political representation. However, women have increasingly adopted traditionally masculine unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking. Also, the Great Recession may have hurt women harder, due to their greater socioeconomic vulnerability. This study aims to analyze gender inequalities in 30 European countries, and its evolution over the 2004-2016 period. Methods We used data from the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC), from people between 25 and 64 years old (N = 3,109,150). We modeled the probability of bad/very bad self-reported health as function of gender, adjusting for age, country and year, using logistic regressions. We further adjusted for education and employment. Then, we included interactions of gender and year to test changes in inequalities over time. Finally, we stratified the analysis according to countries grouped based on the Gender Development Index (GDI). Results Women were 16.8% more likely to report bad health (OR = 1.17, p < 0.01). Considering education and employment, women were 2.6% less likely to report bad health (OR = 0.97, p < 0.01). Over time, adjusting for age, the gender gap reduced from 81.1% (OR = 1.81, p < 0.01) in 2004 to 16.4% in 2016 (OR = 1.16, p < 0.01), and from 31.5% to 2.5% with socioeconomic adjustment. The reduction was larger in countries with a greater GDI. Conclusions Gender inequality has decreased, but was still present in 2016, in favor of men. This thinning is partly explained by the narrowing of inequalities in education and employment. A greater GDI has favored a larger improvement. Key messages Gender inequalities in self-reported health have narrowed over 2004-2006, following the narrowing of socioeconomic inequalities. A greater GDI has favored a larger improvement in gender inequalities.

Factors influencing meat and fish consumption in Serbian households: Evidence from SILC database

Households buy food products, that vary from cheap to expensive, from healthy to unhealthy, from basic to value-added. Beside the nutritional, economic factors have a major and often decisive signifcance on a households’ ability to afford certain food products. Income, price and housing costs have a signifcant influence on the purchase of food products. Aim of this paper is to investigate factors influencing the households’ ability to afford meat or fsh in a meal every other day (or a vegetarian substitute) using data from conducted Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) in Serbia for the year 2013. This has been achieved by development and implementation of the logistic regression model.

Retirement, Pension Eligibility and Home Production

I estimate the effect of retirement on housework by exploiting the discontinuity in pension eligibility generated by the Italian social security rules. Using microdata from the 2007 wave of the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC), I show that women increase their time spent on home production by more than 400 minutes per week. For men, there is on average no evidence of a significant change, which differs from the results of studies in other countries. However, estimates are heterogeneous by marital status, suggesting that married men do not increase time spent on household production because they can rely on their spouses. I also discuss other possible explanations, in particular men dedicating their time to ‘semi-leisure chores’ that do not fall under the definition of housework used in SILC. Overall, results suggest that retirement does not lead to a more equal distribution of ‘core’ household chores between genders.

Retirement, pension eligibility and home production

I estimate the effect of retirement on housework by exploiting the discontinuity in pension eligibility generated by the Italian Social Security rules. Using microdata from the 2007 wave of the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC), I show that women increase their time spent on home production by more than 400min per week. For men, there is on average no evidence of a significant change, which differs from the results of studies in other countries. However, estimates are heterogeneous by marital status, suggesting that married men do not increase their effort on household production because they can rely on their spouses. I also discuss other possible explanations, in particular men dedicating their time to “semi-leisure chores” that do not fall under the definition of housework used in SILC. Overall, results suggest that retirement does not lead to a more equal distribution of “core” household chores between genders.

Evaluating The Quality Of Gross Incomes In SILC: Compare Them With Fiscal Data And Re-calibrate Them Using EUROMOD

In this paper, we shed light on the quality of the gross incomes as reported in the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC). This is done in three steps. First, as both net and gross incomes are reported in SILC, implicit tax rates are calculated and evaluated. In a second step, gross incomes from SILC are compared with gross incomes reported on the fiscal form for the same individuals. Finally, we make use of EUROMOD to re-calibrate SILC gross incomes in order to make them consistent with the reported net ones. We find that, on average, fiscally reported gross incomes exceed gross incomes in the SILC survey. It is not clear however whether the re-calibration method (whereby we use an iterative method to construct adjusted SILC gross incomes starting from the observed net ones) is a genuine improvement upon the reported gross income distribution.

Occupational Downgrading and Wages of New Member States Immigrants to Ireland

This paper explores the importance of occupational downgrading in explaining the pay gap of New Member States (NMS) immigrants to Ireland by taking advantage of two data sources, the Census and the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC). The study identifies biases in the coverage of NMS immigrants in SILC that dampen their estimated earnings disadvantage. Corrections to population weights are suggested. These adjustments have a significant impact on results, increasing both the size of the wage penalty of NMS immigrants and the extent to which the pay gap can be explained by occupational downgrading. A replication of published results for the UK reveals similar patterns of penalties for NMS workers in both countries. Factors that may explain the concentration of NMS workers in low-skill/low-wage occupations are discussed.

Using mortality follow-up of surveys to estimate social inequalities in healthy life years

BackgroundThe estimation of healthy life years (HLY) by socio-economic status (SES) requires two types of data: the prevalence of activity limitation by SES generally extracted from surveys and mortality rates by SES generally derived from a linkage between the SES information in population databases (census, register) and mortality records. In some situations, no population-wide databases are available to produce mortality rates by SES, and therefore some alternatives must be explored. This paper assesses the validity of calculating HLY by SES using mortality rates derived from a linkage between surveys and mortality records.MethodsTwo surveys were chosen to explore the validity of the proposed approach: The Belgian Health Interview Survey (HIS) and the Belgian Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC). The mortality follow-up of these surveys were used to calculate HLY by educational level at age 25. These HLY were compared with HLY estimates calculated using the mortality follow-up of the 2001 census. The validity of this approach was evaluated against two criteria. First, the HLY calculated using the census and those calculated using the surveys must not be significantly different. Second, survey-based HLY must show significant social inequalities since such inequalities have been consistently reported with census-based HLY.ResultsBoth criteria were met. First, for each educational category, no statistically significant difference was found when comparing census-based and survey-based HLY estimates. For instance, men in the lowest educational category have shown a HLY of 34 years according to the HIS, and while this figure was 35.5 years according to the census, this difference was not statistically significant. Second, the survey-based HLY have shown a significant social gradient. For instance, men in the highest educational category are expected to live 9.5 more HLY than their counterparts in the lowest educational category based on the HIS estimates, compared with 7.3 HLY based on the census estimates.ConclusionsThis article suggests that using the mortality follow-up of a nationally representative cross-sectional survey is a valid approach to monitor social inequalities in HLY in the absence of population-wide data.

Impairment and negative equity in the Irish mortgage market

Amongst the many housing markets across the OECD presently experiencing difficulties, the Irish case stands out. Between 2004 and 2007, a significant house price bubble emerged in Ireland, while the real economy was enjoying persistently strong growth rates. The sharp decline in house prices post 2007 coupled with the significant increase in unemployment has generated a combination of difficulties for the Irish residential market. To date, much of the analysis and discussion of the Irish market has tended to focus on either the concept of mortgage repayment distress or potential negative equity. By examining the issue of credit default in the Irish mortgage market, we focus on the interaction between delinquency (repayment distress) and solvency (negative equity). Building on earlier work, which used the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC), we marry existing estimates of repayment distress with estimates of negative equity for a representative sample of Irish households. Using copula modelling we then examine the dependence structure across the distributions of mortgage delinquency and solvency for these households. As a result, we are in a position to estimate the probability that a household experiencing repayment distress might also be in negative equity.

Public Transfers and the Age-Profile of Poverty in Europe

Ensuring adequate living standards to a growing number of elderly while restraining the growth of pension spending represents the main challenge for pension policy in most countries. There is a need for an in-depth analysis of the economic conditions of the elderly which can help targeting resources in the coming years to the more needy groups. Children are another potentially vulnerable group of the population: their poverty can affect human capital accumulation and have long lasting effects on life-time well-being. Using data from the latest wave of the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC), we document that the poverty rates of these two age groups with respect to the other components of the population differ considerably across European countries. These differences are largely due to the different anti-poverty effectiveness of national social policies. In particular, in 'Social Democratic' and 'Corporatist' welfare states the age-profile of poverty is flat; on the contrary, in Anglo-Saxon and especially in Southern European countries young and elderly groups show remarkably higher poverty rates.