Author: Ronan Lyons

The Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland is delighted to open a call for entrants for the Barrington Prize for its 176th session, which takes place between September 2022 and June 2023. More details are given below.

Call for entrants
The Barrington Medal is awarded annually by the Council of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland under the auspices of the Barrington Trust (founded in 1836 by the bequest of John Barrington). The award, which includes both a silver medal and €1,000, is intended to recognise a promising new researcher in the economic and social sciences in Ireland. This will be the 173rd anniversary of the lecture series and the recipient will be the 132nd Barrington Lecturer. Recipients in the past 35 years include:
Deirdre McHugh, Don Thornhill, George Lee, Alan Joyce, Daniel McCoy, Brian Lucey, Kevin O’Rourke, Siobhan Lucey, Mary Walsh, Philip Lane, Aidan Kane, Donal O’Neill, Peter Clinch, Colm Harmon, Ronnie O’Toole, Cathal O’Donoghue, Paul McNicholas, Mary Keeney, Liam Delaney, Martina Lawless, Cal Muckley, Orla Doyle, Yvonne McCarthy, Ronan Lyons, Mark McGovern, Rebecca Stuart, Karina Doorley, Daragh Clancy, Barra Roantree, Niall Farrell and Paul Kilgarriff.

The lecture should be based on a paper of not more than 7,500 words addressing a topic of relevance to economic or social policy and of current interest in Ireland. In treating the issue of economic or social policy, the paper may either report the findings of a statistical research study dealing with some aspect of the problem or deal with the underlying theoretical considerations involved, or preferably combine these two approaches. It should be written in a manner that makes it accessible to non-specialists in the area. More technical material may be included in an appendix. The paper is published in the Journal of the Society, so it should not have been published before (nor should it be published subsequently without the prior consent of the Council of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland).

Candidates, who at the time of their submission must be not more than 35 years of age, should at least submit a detailed abstract of approximately 1,000 words on the proposed lecture, with preference being given to full papers. A short CV and the name of a proposer who is familiar with their work should also be submitted. Entries will be accepted from 1st June to 31st August, 2022 and should be sent to the Honorary Secretaries of the Society, via email, using the email address secretary@ssisi.ie, as should any queries regarding this call for entrants.

The Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland is delighted to open a call for entrants for the Barrington Prize for its 175th session, which takes place between September 2021 and June 2022. More details are given below.

Call for entrants
The Barrington Medal is awarded annually by the Council of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland under the auspices of the Barrington Trust (founded in 1836 by the bequest of John Barrington). The award, which includes both a silver medal and €1,000, is intended to recognise a promising new researcher in the economic and social sciences in Ireland. This will be the 172nd anniversary of the lecture series and the recipient will be the 131st Barrington Lecturer. Recipients in the past 35 years include:
Deirdre McHugh, Don Thornhill, George Lee, Alan Joyce, Daniel McCoy, Brian Lucey, Kevin O’Rourke, Siobhan Lucey, Mary Walsh, Philip Lane, Aidan Kane, Donal O’Neill, Peter Clinch, Colm Harmon, Ronnie O’Toole, Cathal O’Donoghue, Paul McNicholas, Mary Keeney, Liam Delaney, Martina Lawless, Cal Muckley, Orla Doyle, Yvonne McCarthy, Ronan Lyons, Mark McGovern, Rebecca Stuart, Karina Doorley, Daragh Clancy, Barra Roantree, and Niall Farrell.

The lecture should be based on a paper of not more than 7,500 words addressing a topic of relevance to economic or social policy and of current interest in Ireland. In treating the issue of economic or social policy, the paper may either report the findings of a statistical research study dealing with some aspect of the problem or deal with the underlying theoretical considerations involved, or preferably combine these two approaches. It should be written in a manner that makes it accessible to non-specialists in the area. More technical material may be included in an appendix. The paper is published in the Journal of the Society, so it should not have been published before (nor should it be published subsequently without the prior consent of the Council of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland).

Candidates, who at the time of their submission must be not more than 35 years of age, should at least submit a detailed abstract of approximately 1,000 words on the proposed lecture, with preference being given to full papers. A short CV and the name of a proposer who is familiar with their work should also be submitted. Entries will be accepted from 1st June to 31st August, 2021 and should be sent to the Honorary Secretaries of the Society, via email, using the email address secretary@ssisi.ie, as should any queries regarding this call for entrants.

The Statistical & Social Inquiry Society of Ireland invites you to attend the second Ordinary Meeting of its 174th session, where a symposium with the title “Jurisprudence and its impact upon Public Policy” will take place. The Society’s original object was to be the promotion of the study of statistics, jurisprudence, and social and economic science. The symposium highlights the jurisprudence aspect with a discussion of how modern laws impact upon the public policy realm, with contributions from three distinguished speakers: Paul Gallagher SC is the Attorney General. Margaret Gray SC QC is a specialist in European and Competition law. Michael McDowell SC is a former Attorney General and Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. Given the public health guidelines, this meeting will take place online, using the Zoom platform, at 4.30pm this Thursday November 26th. To register for this webinar, please click here or copy and paste the link at the bottom of this email into your browser. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. As ever, attendance is open to all and, given the format, feel free to circulate to others who may be interested so that they may also register their interest and attend on the day. Link for registering:  https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_kOOX3m4KTqahGtY_wn_qJw

Guest post by Reamonn Lydon (Central Bank).

[Disclaimer: this blog post represents my personal views and not those of the Central Bank of Ireland or the European System of Central Banks]

The CSO has just released an experimental analysis of Occupations with Potential Exposure to COVID-19. This is useful data for anyone who wants to understand how the Covid-19 shock interacts with the structure and composition of employment.  It provides important information on which sorts of occupations and workers have been most directly affected by the restrictions to limit the spread of the virus.

Using O*NET data on the task-related content of four-digit occupations, the CSO construct an Proximity index and an Exposure to diseases index.  Here, I focus on the proximity index, although a similar analysis of the Exposure index would also be of interest.

Quoting from the background notes:

In the O*NET data “Respondents score their job on a scale of one to five where, for proximity, one indicates that the respondent does not work near other people (beyond 100 feet) while five indicates that they are very close to others (near touching) … The data is harmonised on a scale ranging from 0 to 100 by using the following equation: S = ((O-L)/(H-L)) * 100 where S is the standardised score, O the original rating score between one and five, L the lowest possible score (one) and H the highest possible score (five). Under this new classification, the standardised physical proximity measure is defined by:

0 –     I do not work near other people (beyond 100 ft.)

25 –   I work with others but not closely (for example, private office)

50 –   Slightly close (for example, shared office)

75 –   Moderately close (at arm’s length)

100 – Very close (near touching)”

The CSO has constructed a proximity score for 296 four-digit SOC10 occupations. Crucially, it then maps these to total employment, percentage female, over-55 and non-Irish using Census 2016.

Using employment weights, the median proximity score for all workers is 57.6; the mean is 61.8. The four digit occupation at the median is Sales related occupations not elsewhere classified. The lowest scoring occupation (least proximate) is Artists (21.5); the highest scoring is Paramedics (97).

The chart below shows the cumulative share of employment (y-axis) by proximity score (x-axis) for the characteristics provided by the CSO. The variation across charactistics is striking: female workers are more likely to be in ‘lower proximity jobs’, almost 60 per cent are below the median score for all workers. It is hard to pin-point a single occupation that contributes to this result for females, but a relatively higher concentration in occupations like Chartered and certified accountants, Cleaners and domestics and Administrative Occupations do stand out.  By contrast, male, younger and non-Irish workers are all more likely to be in high-proximity jobs, with just 40 per cent below the median.  The relatively higher share of younger workers on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) – 41 per cent of under-25s are on PUP currently, compared with 21 per cent of over-25s – tallies with the observation that more of these workers tend to be in higher proximity occupations, and therefore more impacted by the Covid-related restrictions.

For those groups with a greater concentration in high-proximity jobs – that is, male, younger and non-Irish – there is a step-jump around 70. In terms of the occupations arround this jump, for males it includes sports and leisure activities, skilled trades, constrction and protective services. For non-Irish nationals, who make up around 15% of employment (in the 2016 data, it is closer to 20% now) it is a broadly similar set of jobs, but also including a range of food services occupations.  

Finally, the CSO has also published the median annual earnings by occupation. Chart 2 shows the average of median annual earnings by occupation for each quartile of the proximty score distribution (weighted by employment). Higher proximity occupations tend to lower paid.  For example, in the top 25 per cent of jobs by proximity score (which also happens to be a score at 75 or above), the average of earnings per occupation is around €33,500 (in 2016). The average for the bottom 25 per cent occupations (a proximity score of around 49) is €42,300.  When we control for all characteristics such as female, share of over-55s and non-Irish by population, we find that going from the least proximate quartile score (49) to the most proximate quartile score (75) is associated with earnings being around 20 per cent lower on average.

Conclusions

Information on the task-related content of occupation is vital for understanding which sort of jobs are affected by the social distancing restrictions put in place to fight the Covid pandemic.  Similar work in Adrjan and Lydon (2020) shows how countries with a higher concentration of ‘high-proximty’ employment experienced a larger negative shock to labour demand when the crisis first hit. This includes Ireland. Analysing the occupational breakdown from the CSO highlights that younger, male and non-Irish workers are more concentrated in ‘high proximity roles’. These roles are also lower paid on average. This provides crucial insight into who is most affected by the Covid shock, and what sort of policies might be put in place to help certain groups of workers.