On March 7th, 2024 the Central Statistics Office (CSO) published the results of the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) 2023. 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 CSO noted that “This report presents the results for 2023, using an income reference period of the 2022 calendar year” and that “Census of Population 2022 results have been used to revise population estimates for 2020 to 2022, and consequently results for SILC survey years 2020, 2021, and 2022 are revised”.
At-risk-of-poverty rate
In 2023 the at-risk-of-poverty rate decreased by 1.9 percentage points to 10.6%. However, if the cost of living measures were excluded from this figure, the at-risk-of-poverty rate would have increased over the year to 13%. 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 much higher – at 25.5%, a drop of 6.6 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 2023 was 17.3%, an increase of 0.7 percentage points. Again this rate was higher for unemployed people, more than two times the national figure at 37.8%, though it did decrease over the year by of 8.8 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, decreased by 1.3 percentage points to 3.6%. The consistent poverty rate for people who identified as unemployed was 9.4%, a decrease of 4.9 percentage points over the year.
Amongst the other groups whose consistent poverty rates were greater than the national figure were: people unable to work due to long-standing health problems (16.5%); households with one adult aged under 65 years (13%); households with one adult with children aged under 18 years (7.1%); no person at work in the household (8.9%); and people whose tenure status was rented or rent free (8.5%).