On October 27th, 2020, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) published the Survey on Income and Living Conditions, SILC, for 2019. SILC is a household survey that captures information on a range of income and social transfers.
Amongst the data produced by SILC are key national poverty indicators including the ‘at-risk-of- poverty’ rate; the deprivation rate; and the consistent poverty rate.
- The at-risk-of-poverty rate is defined as “the share of persons with an equivalised income below a given percentage (usually 60%) of the national median income”.
- The deprivation rate is defined as “Households that are excluded and marginalised from consuming goods and services which are considered the norm for other people in society, due to an inability to afford them”.
- The consistent poverty rate captures people “who are defined as being at risk of poverty and experiencing enforced deprivation (experiencing two or more types of deprivation)”.
At the national level at-risk-of- poverty rate declined from 14% in 2018 to 12.8% in 2019. While the deprivation rate increased from 15.1% in 2018 to 17.8% in 2019. The deprivation rate for people who are at-risk-of-poverty decreased by 2.4% over the year to 42.7%. The consistent poverty rate declined by 0.1% to 5.5% in 2019.
Principal Economic Status is amongst the figures the CSO breakdown the Survey of Income and Living Conditions into, which captures data on people who are at work, unemployed, a student, on home duties, retired, or not at work due to illness or disability.
Even though the three indicators of at-risk-of- poverty; deprivation; and consistent poverty all improved over the year for people who are unemployed, they are still considerably higher than the national figures. In 2019, the at-risk-of-poverty rate for people who were unemployed was 35.4%, the only group with a higher rate was people who are not at work due to illness or disability, at 37.5%.
The deprivation rate for people who were unemployed was 36% in 2019. Two groups had a higher rate: again people not at work due to illness or disability at 43.3%; and people parenting alone with children aged less than 18 years, at 45.4%. The indicators for people who are parenting alone comes from the Household Composition breakdown of the SILC data, where one parent families’ rates of poverty are considerably higher than other households.
The consistent poverty rate for people who are unemployed was 20.2% in 2019, the highest rate across any of the detailed data. The CSO also produce information on the ‘number of persons at work in the household’. The poverty rates for households with no-one at work were considerably higher than other households with people at work. ‘Jobless’ households as they are sometimes called had an at-risk-of-poverty rate of 34.1%; a deprivation rate of 31.9%; and a consistent poverty rate of 17.3% in 2019.
To read the full survey please follow this link https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-silc/surveyonincomeandlivingconditionssilc2019/