My tuppence worth on fiscal data and fiscal plans on irisheconomy.ie is posted here.
On October 8, 2010, In Data visualisation, Historical Irish public finances data, By Aidan Kane
On June 4, 2010, In Journalism, By Aidan Kane
I contributed a short piece to a Sunday Tribune feature last week-end which canvassed some economists’ views on the inevitability or otherwise of sovereign default for Ireland. The full article is here. My contribution is about mid-way down.
On May 10, 2010, In Historical Irish public finances data, By Aidan Kane
I presented on my ongoing work in historical Irish public finance data to the “Mapping the Irish State” research project at the UCD Geary Institute last Friday. It was hugely useful for me to have an insight into their ongoing work also. I’d presented an overview of the work at a Geary Institute seminar earlier last month, which paved the way for this.
You can download the pdf file of my slides here.
I’m going to keep an email list to update people on this: just send me an email aidan.kane@nuigalway.ie and I’ll add you to my little black book.
On March 15, 2010, In Data visualisation, By Aidan Kane
The animated population pyramid (Ireland 1950-2009) previously posted here can be used to generate this series of small multiple images. Click on the image below to see the pdf version for a better resolution.
On March 15, 2010, In Data visualisation, By Aidan Kane
My previous example of an animated population pyramid for Ireland relied on data from Censuses in Ireland. The Census has generally been held every ten or five years in Ireland. My latest example relies on mid-year annual population estimates from the CSO, covering 1950 to 2009.
You can download the animation (a pdf file 226Kb) from
here.
You can view the file in your browser, and it can also be saved locally as a pdf file. The animation should work in recent versions of Acrobat Reader.
A number of basic features in the changing population structure emerge, I think, fairly readily from running the animation forward (maybe others will spot a lot more):
- Most obviously, overall population growth, as the pyramid takes more real estate on screen
- The missing young people in the 1950s and 1960s as the large numbers of young children don’t stay around long enough to be young adults/adults, so that the distribution is pinched.
- A bit of a reversal of that by the time the early 1970s come along as emigration decreases and indeed we experience net immigration (mainly returned migrants).
- The return of emgration in the 1980s, again reflected in the age structure as young people leave, and so e.g., the age group 15-19 doesn’t transition so readily into 20-24.
- A big impact on age groups 25+ from immigration post 2004 or so
- Absolute increases in older age groups (a percentage version of this graphic would probably work well to bring out proportions) and the systematically higher life expectancy of women at the upper age groups
In any event, a useful way of introducing some of the basic patterns in the data.
On March 4, 2010, In Innovation policy and strategies, By Aidan Kane
Another ‘big picture’ strategy review group is the Innovation Taskforce which is chaired by Chris Horn, who also runs an excellent blog. He’s indicated on twitter that the report of this group will come out March 11th.
Hadn’t spotted this before now, despite searching, but the HEA has made available resources related to the group reviewing strategy for higher education in Ireland, chaired by Colin Hunt, and due to report…when?
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