Young People's Trajectories through Irish Housing Booms and Busts: headship, housing and labour market access among the under 30s since the late 1960s

The economic, social and demographic history of the Republic of Ireland since World War II is distinctive in western European terms. While many of her neighbours experienced strong economic and population growth during the post war decades, resulting in unprecedented prosperity for the generation born during the post war baby boom, Ireland experienced economic stagnation and population decline during the 1950s, punctuated by a period of growth in the 1960s and early 1970s, until the traditional pattern of economic stagnation was reinstated in the 1980s (Kennedy et al 1988). This longstanding pattern of economic under performance changed in the mid 1990s with the advent of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economic boom and during the decade which followed Ireland’s economic growth caught up with and then surpassed the western European average, employment and household disposable income grew radically and the Irish population expanded by 20 per cent (Clinch et al 2002).