Research

From joint to individual: The distributional and labour supply effect of tax individualisation in Ireland, with Karina Doorley (ESRI), and Dora Tuda (ESRI) IZA Discussion Paper (under review)

This paper examines the distributional and labour supply effects of moving from joint to fully individualised income taxation in Ireland. The current partially joint system benefits married couples but discourages labour market participation of secondary earners, most often women. Using the microsimulation model SWITCH linked to a structural discrete choice labour supply model, we account for childcare costs and intra-household substitution effects. Our results show that tax individualisation increases married women’s labour supply, slightly reduces men’s hours, and enhances women’s economic independence through higher relative income and bargaining power. A robustness check contrasts a gender-based model with an earnership-based approach, allowing us to isolate behavioural responses to financial incentives from broader gendered constraints. This provides new evidence on the institutional and structural barriers shaping women’s economic autonomy. 

Reallocating the Clock: How public services are reshaping women's time use in Europe, with Frecheville, R., BETA Working Paper (under review)

This paper analyses how public services shape women’s time allocation between paid and unpaid work across Europe. Using the newly developed Public Services Availability Database (PSAD), which harmonises data on childcare, schools, hospitals, and long-term care at the NUTS-2 level in 450 regions, we link regional service provision with individual time use data from the European Quality of Life Surveys. Our results show that childcare and long-term care services reduce women’s unpaid work, while schools and hospitals increase labour market participation, particularly among older and less-educated women. At the same time, schools and hospitals are also associated with higher unpaid work, suggesting that public services may reallocate rather than diminish domestic responsibilities. Heterogeneity analysis reveals unequal impacts, such as a “Matthew effect” in long-term care. Overall, our study highlights the complex and multifaceted ways in which welfare state services affect gendered time allocation and women’s economic independence.

Assessing the cost of disability: New equivalence scales from Irish and UK expenditure data, with Claire Keane (ESRI), and Iris Wohnsiedler (ESRI)

This paper develops new disability-adjusted equivalence scales to capture the higher cost of living faced by households including a disabled member. Using harmonised expenditure surveys from 2000 to 2019, we estimate additional disability-related costs through structural demand models that recover both consumption elasticities and marginal utilities across detailed spending categories. This approach identifies how households with disabled members adjust their consumption, which goods generate higher unavoidable expenditure, and how much extra income is required to reach a comparable standard of living. The resulting equivalence scales provide a more accurate basis for poverty measurement and reveal hidden inequalities not visible in income-based indicators. Beyond poverty rates, the paper highlights how disability shapes the marginal utility of consumption and the constraints households face, offering new insights for disability-inclusive social policy.