Year: 2012

(from email by Sean Lyons)

A meeting of the Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland will take place on Wednesday, 18th April 2012, starting at 6:00 pm, in the Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2. Dr Orla Doyle (UCD School of Economics and Geary Institute) will present a paper titled Breaking the Cycle of Deprivation: An Experimental Evaluation of an Early Childhood Intervention.

The abstract is set out below and a draft of the paper is available here.

Abstract:
Deprivation early in life has multiple long term consequences for both the individual and society. An increasing body of evidence finds that targeted, early interventions aimed at at-risk children and their families can reduce socioeconomic inequalities in children’s skills and capabilities. This paper describes a randomised control trial (RCT) evaluation of a five-year preventative programme which aims to improve the school readiness skills of socioeconomically disadvantaged children. The Preparing for Life (PFL) programme is one of the first studies in Ireland to use random assignment to experimentally modify the environment of high risk families and track its impact over time. This paper describes the design and motivation for the study, the randomisation procedure adopted and the baseline data collected. Using Monte Carlo permutation testing, it finds that the randomisation procedure was successful as there are no systematic differences between the treatment and control groups at baseline. This indicates that future analysis of treatment effects over the course of the five year evaluation can be causally attributed to the programme and used to determine the impact of Preparing for Life on children’s school readiness skills.

Over the past couple of weeks the CSO have released some useful survey data on the household sector (see the Household Budget Survey and the Survey of Income and Living Conditions). 

Today the CSO have released the Q4 2011 Non-Financial Accounts which gives a macro view of the sectors of the economy.

The 2011 figures remain preliminary (and won’t be finalised until the full release in October) but the current and capital accounts of the household sector for the past five years are presented below the fold. 

Krugman has a very strongly-worded op-ed piece in The New York Times today, arguing against the fiscal austerity strategy of the Eurozone.  The article is inside a paywall (you are allowed ten visits per month without paying) but here is a fair-use quote that gives a sense of his views:

“When the bubble burst, the Spanish economy was left high and dry; Spain’s fiscal problems are a consequence of its depression, not its cause. Nonetheless, the prescription coming from Berlin and Frankfurt is, you guessed it, even more fiscal austerity. This is, not to mince words, just insane. …… Rather than admit that they’ve been wrong, European leaders seem determined to drive their economy — and their society — off a cliff. And the whole world will pay the price. “

Pretty scary stuff to read.  I am not sure what alternative he is offering for countries running out (or run out) of fiscal space, like Ireland.  He seems to think that Germany should come to our rescue — good luck with that.  It is quite pessimistic in tone so perhaps he knows that his alternative non-austerity strategy is also not a politically feasible outcome.