Housing and Socio Economic Conditions in County Cork: a Profile Analysis

Abstract

Massive changes have taken place in the spatial structure of rural Irish society in the last three decades. A century or more of inexorable population decline has been replaced by growth which is evident even in some of the remotest parts of the island. 44.4% of the state's population resided outside census towns in 1981, making it one of Europe's most rural societies. An analysis of the links between the social and economic structure of the study area and its housing characteristics reveals a distinct spatial pattern, and it implicitly demonstrates the differential responses to the opportunities of the 1970s as depicted in a series of housing profiles. This work focuses on an analysis of these profiles within county Cork, which is Ireland's largest and most varied county in terms of its physical and human endowments.