Children at risk of poverty or social exclusion

This morning Eurostat published a news release with the 2011 update of the at-risk-of-poverty-or-social-exclusion statistics for children.  The figures come from this earlier short report. The data for Ireland is from 2010 and the headline figure for Ireland immediately stands out in this sentence from the release.

In 2011, the highest shares of those aged less than 18 who were at risk of poverty or social exclusion were registered in Bulgaria (52%), Romania (49%), Latvia (44%), Hungary (40%) and Ireland (38% in 2010), and the lowest in Sweden, Denmark and Finland (all 16%), followed by Slovenia (17%), the Netherlands (18%) and Austria (19%).

The next countries with rates lower than Ireland’s are Lithuania (33%), Italy (32%), Spain (31%), Greece (30%) and Poland (30%).  The EU average is 27%.

What is measured is persons who are in at least one of the following categories:

  • at risk of poverty (below 60% of median equivalised income after transfers), or
  • severely materially deprived (cannot afford four items from a list of nine), or
  • living in households with very-low work intensity (adults working less than 20% of work potential).

A release a couple of weeks ago from the CSO showed that the at-risk-of-poverty rate for those aged under 18 in Ireland was 18.6% in 2011.  The EU27 average for 2011 was 20.6%.  As shown above adding the other two categories (material deprivation and work intensity) gives a figure of 27% for the EU27 and 38% for Ireland.

It is a slight difficulty that a revision of the 2010 data for Ireland has meant a delay in the publication of the granular details.  The headline category places Ireland as the fifth-worst in the EU and understanding why that is the case is an important question.

Government announces end of ELG

There is an update from the Department of Finance here and the Minister’s statement is here.

Italy, and Karl Whelan on the need for growth

Mario Monti has done Europe’s voters a huge service. It would have been easy for him to remain aloof during this election; by standing for election he allowed Italians to directly express their opinion on the EU’s current macroeconomic policy mix. The results are pretty conclusive: current policies have no democratic legitimacy, at least in Italy.

We all remember Jean-Claude Juncker’s statement that “We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it”. He got it half right: they certainly don’t know how to get re-elected. But it is also clear that they really don’t know what to do about the economy either. And this represents a huge problem for the European project, since by pinning their colours so firmly to the mast of an incoherent and destructive macroeconomic policy mix, Europe’s leaders risk doing huge damage to that project. Indeed, the damage is already occurring.

It would be nice to think that these leaders would take seriously pleas by people like Karl for a saner approach to macroeconomic policy. The evidence since September, however, is that they will sit on their hands unless forced to do otherwise by the markets: the risk of financial crisis, not the reality of peripheral unemployment crises, is what grabs their attention. Another reason to welcome the Italian vote, perhaps.

Update: Paul Krugman has a very similar reaction here.

Reaping the Benefits of Globalisation: What are the Opportunities and Challenges for Europe and Ireland?

This Conference, jointly organised with the European Commission, is an associated event of the Irish Presidency of the Council of the EU. It will present and discuss the main findings of the 2012 edition of the European Competitiveness Report as well as recent related empirical evidence and their implications for industrial and innovation policies in Europe and Ireland. The Conference Programme and more information are available here.

Negotiations conclude at Lansdowne House

There are reports that the negotiations between the government and unions representing public sector workers have concluded.  Some details are provided here.

UPDATE: A briefing note on the LRC proposals is here.