Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Department of Social Protection recently published a social impact assessment of the main tax and social welfare measures for 2015, based on the ESRI tax-welfare model, SWITCH. The analysis found there is no difference in the risk-of-poverty rate for men and women as a result of the last budget.

The ESRI, on foot of a commission from the Equality Authority, has examined the impact of policy changes on men and women over the period 2009 to 2013. The findings were published last October in a report called the Gender Impact of Tax and Benefit Changes. The report analyses the effects on disposable income due to changes to public sector pay, tax, PRSI and welfare payments.

The average loss for all households over this period was 9.6% of disposable income. Less than a fifth of the reduction in disposable income can be attributed to welfare changes, while three fifths of the reduction in disposable income can be attributed to taxation or PRSI changes and obviously the introduction of the USC. The remainder of the reduction in disposable income was caused by reductions in public sector pay. The report found that retired single people experienced a loss of 4.5% in disposable income over the period. However, social welfare changes over the period resulted in a slight increase in disposable income of 0.1%, with the same impact for men and women.

Single people without children experienced an average loss in disposable income of 9.5%. Welfare changes resulted in a 1.4% loss in disposable income for women, which was slightly lower than the 1.6% loss for men. Female lone parents experienced an overall loss of 9.1% of which welfare changes accounted for 4.4%. Households headed by couples experienced, on average, an 11.9% reduction in disposable income. Separate research conducted on behalf of the Department by Dorothy Watson of the ESRI suggests that in Ireland, income is shared fully across couple households, meaning that any loss of income and hence change in living standards is likely to be equally shared across the household. As the adults in that household would consist significantly of a man and a woman, the effects are shared equally.

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