THE GAP in life expectancy between men and women living in Ireland has narrowed to its lowest level for 35 years, a new social and economic report by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has found.
Ireland also has the second highest price levels among the 27 EU member states and the report also found young Irish people are among the most highly educated in the EU, according to the Measuring Ireland’s Progress 2007 research.
The average value of a housing loan increased almost fourfold between 1997 and 2006, while the number of such loans doubled, the report found.
The statistics show life expectancy at birth for Irish men has risen by 1.6 years since 2003 to 76.7 years, while the life expectancy of Irish women rose by 1.2 years in the same period and now stands at 81.5 years.
These improvements have reduced the life expectancy gap between men and women to 4.8 years, the lowest it has been since the 1970-1972 period.
The findings were welcomed by the Irish ageing network Age Action, which said the Government must now start planning for an ageing population.
“Planning must go beyond issues like pensions to include areas such as accommodation, planning, employment, health care and transport,” Age Action said. The report found Ireland has become the second most expensive EU member state to live in, after Denmark, with prices 25 per cent above the EU average.
Irish consumers are paying some 12 per cent more for goods than individuals living in the United Kingdom and 20 per cent more than those in the 13 eurozone states.
The report also reveals Ireland has been performing well in the field of education in recent years.
In 2007, 41.3 per cent of the population aged between 25 and 34 had completed third-level education. This was the second highest rate across the European Union and well above the average of 29.1 per cent for the 27 EU member states.
Irish 15-year-olds were found to have the second highest levels of reading literacy in the EU in 2006, behind Finland.
However, maths and scientific literacy levels did not rank as highly and the pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools was almost 18 in 2005, with 11 of the reporting EU member states reporting a pupil-teacher ratio of less than 13.
The Irish Business and Employers Confederation said the figures were encouraging, but added that there was plenty of room for improvement if Ireland intends to build a knowledge-based economy.
The State’s property boom and economic success during the Celtic Tiger years is reflected in the housing and employment figures contained in the report.
The average value of a new housing loan increased from €62,000 in 1997 to almost €230,000 in 2006, with mortgage interest rates almost halving and the number of home loans taken out almost doubling from 57,901 to 111,253 in the same period.
Employment rose from 59.7 per cent in 1998 to 69 per cent in 2007. The rate of women in employment increased by over 12 percentage points in that period and the rate of men employed rose by 6 per cent.
Ireland had the sixth lowest unemployment rate in the EU in 2007 at less than two-thirds of the 7.1 per cent average. The unemployment rate for early school leavers in the 18-24 age group was 23.4 per cent, compared with a rate of 8.4 cent for all persons aged 18-24. Some 7 per cent of individuals living in Ireland were in consistent poverty, as were 22.8 per cent of unemployed people.
In environment, Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions were 12.5 percentage points higher than the Kyoto 2008-2012 target, but the level of waste placed in landfills in Ireland fell from 67 per cent in 2004 to 63.9 per cent in 2006.
