The goal of this report is to examine the risk of disadvantage associated with the nine
grounds on the basis of which unequal treatment is prohibited under the Equality
Acts: gender, marital status, family status, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability,
race and membership of the Traveller community. This comprehensive analysis is
made possible by access to the full Census 2006 Research Micro-data File. For the
first time in Ireland, we are able to examine the consequences of group membership
across all of these categories in a single study. Unlike most national surveys, there
are enough members of small groups such as Travellers, other ethnic minorities and
religious minorities to compare their situations with those of more advantaged
groups. Also, unlike most national surveys, which must be concerned with issues of
coverage and response, the census coverage of different groups in the population is
as complete as it can be. Finally, we were able to investigate whether membership of
two disadvantaged groups (e.g. being a woman and having a disability) will always
result in significantly worse outcomes. Our analysis in this area shows that this need
not always be the case. This highlights the need to consider the processes of
disadvantage (such as the operation of the educational system, labour market, family
roles, migration and life cycle patterns) and the way these may interact to result in
different outcomes.
We examine five different areas of disadvantage: low levels of education, being
outside the labour market, unemployment, lower manual social class and lack of
access to a car. The report provides figures on the overall or ‘gross’ differences in
disadvantage between the groups and on the ‘net’ disadvantage that remains after
taking account of membership of any of the other groups as well as migration
experience, urban/rural location and region. The focus is on adults of working age
(25 to 64 years) and we distinguish throughout between two broad age groups: 25–
44, where family formation is concentrated, and 45–64.
In the first two chapters of the report we describe the conceptual background to the
study, emphasising the importance of understanding processes of disadvantage, and
the data used for the analysis.
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