back to articles

Survey of Income and Living Conditions 2022

24 February 2023 - 11:50 am


KS

On February 22nd 2023, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) published the results of the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) 2022. SILC is a household survey which provides the data from which key national poverty indicators are derived, including the at-risk-of-poverty rate, the deprivation rate, and the consistent poverty rate. The participants for this survey were interviewed in the first six months of 2022, while the income and poverty estimates are calculated on 2021 income.

At-risk-of-poverty rate

In 2022 the at-risk-of-poverty rate increased by 1.8 percentage points to 13.1%. The CSO noted that without the COVID-19 pandemic income supports this figure would have been 20.5%. While if all social transfers are excluded, the at-risk-of-poverty rate would rise to 36.7% - 1.9 percentage points lower than 2021. Social transfers include Child Benefit, Housing Assistance Payment, Jobseekers payment, Pandemic Unemployment Payment, One Parent Family Payment, pensions, illness and disability payments.

The SILC data is presented under a number of difference categories including Principal Economic Status (PES). Under PES, the at-risk-of-poverty rate for people who identified themselves as unemployed was considerably higher – at 35.6%, a rise of 12.4 percentage points over the year.

Deprivation rate

The CSO notes that the “enforced deprivation rate is the percentage of persons that are considered to be marginalised or deprived because they live in households that cannot afford goods and services which are considered to be the norm for other households in society.” This rate captures people in the population who were not able to afford at least two of the items / activities contained in a list of eleven.

The deprivation rate for 2022 was 17.7%, an increase of 3.9 percentage points. The deprivation rate for unemployed people was substantially higher - at 48.6%, an increase of 17 percentage points.

Consistent poverty rate

At the national level the consistent poverty rate, which captures people who are at-risk-of-poverty and experience deprivation, rose by 1.3 percentage points to 5.3%. Again this figure was significantly higher for people who are unemployed - at 18%, an increase of 7.8 percentage points over the year.

Amongst the other groups with noticeably higher consistent poverty rates were people unable to work due to long-standing health problems (19.7%); households with one adult aged under 65 years (14.5%); households with one adult with children aged under 18 years (14.1%); no person at work in the household (13.8%); and people whose tenure status was rented or rent free (12.9%).