Development strategies, social policy and poverty reduction: lessons from Ireland / Estrategias de desarrollo, política social y reducción de la pobreza: experiencias desde Irlanda

Abstract

This paper offers a brief overview of the principal development strategies used by the Irish state, the social policies associated with them and their impact on poverty. While the paper traces the background since independence in 1922, its principal focus is on the period since the 1980s, since this is the period in which the policies were put in place that are associated with the boom period of the 1990s, widely known as the Celtic Tiger. The paper’s subject is the Republic of Ireland (known as the Irish Free State from 1922 to 1937 and as Éire from 1937 to 1949). It begins by offering an overview of the principal developmental strategies pursued by the state from 1922 to 1980, and the poverty outcomes so far as we know them. The second section examines the crisis of the early 1980s, and the developmental and social policy responses to that crisis that laid the foundations for the Celtic Tiger. The following section outlines the nature of the economic success achieved, identifying the principal motors of economic growth and their impacts on the labour market, and also identifying trends in poverty and inequality. The fourth section seeks to explain the correlation of developmental and distributional outcomes in Ireland’s recent development, interrogating the reasons for the correlation of high growth with increases in poverty and declines in welfare effort.

Keywords

• Development models
• poverty and inequality
• social policy
• welfare effort
• Ireland