The wealth, health and well-being of Ireland’s older people before and during the economic crisis

Abstract

The economic crisis of 2008/9 was felt more acutely in Ireland relative to most other countries and culminated in the international bailout in 2010. Given the economic collapse, Ireland provides an ideal case study of the link between wealth collapses and movements in variables such as health and well-being. Using nationally representative samples of older people collected before and during the crisis, we show that mean net assets fell by 45% between 2006/7 and 2012/13. In spite of this massive fall in wealth, measures of health and well-being remained broadly unchanged. However, expectations about future living standards became less optimistic. The results tend to support the findings of other recent studies that recessions do not have widespread negative effects on health and well-being.

Keywords:

• recession
• wealth
• health
• well-being

JEL Classification:

• D31
• J14

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge comments from Jim Smith, Kevin Denny, Irene Mosca, Eibhlin Hudson and Anne Nolan. We use data from SHARE release 2.5.0.

Funding

We acknowledge financial support from the NIA [grant number R21AG040387]. The SHARE data collection has been primarily funded by the European Commission through the 5th Framework Programme (project QLK6-CT-2001-00360 in the thematic programme Quality of Life), through the 6th Framework Programme (projects SHARE-I3, RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE, CIT5-CT-2005-028857 and SHARELIFE, CIT4-CT-2006-028812) and through the 7th Framework Programme (SHARE-PREP, N° 211909, SHARE-LEAP, N° 227822 and SHARE M4, N° 261982). Additional funding from the US National Institute on Aging (U01 AG09740-13S2, P01 AG005842, P01 AG08291, P30 AG12815, R21 AG025169, Y1-AG-4553-01, IAG BSR06-11 and OGHA 04–064) and the German Ministry of Education and Research as well as from various national sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www.share-project.org for a full list of funding institutions).