Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) 2017

Deprivation and Consistent poverty rates decreased in 2017

The Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) in Ireland is a household survey covering a broad range of issues in relation to income and living conditions.  It is the official source of data on household and individual income and provides a number of key national poverty indicators, such as the at risk of poverty rate, the consistent poverty rate and rates of enforced deprivation.  This report presents the results for 2017 and comparable data for previous years.

The NUTS boundaries were amended on 21^st November 2016 under Regulation (EC) No. 2066/2016 and took effect from 1^st January 2018*.  As the Central Statistics Office (CSO) weight results in the SILC using NUTS3 groups, survey estimates have been revised to take account of these changes.  The reweighted data from 2012 to 2016 inclusive is published with the SILC 2017 results and users should note that there is a break in the regional data series from 2012, as the results for the period 2004 to 2011 are published using the old NUTS groupings.

As the SILC is a sample survey, independent estimates of population and numbers of households are required each year to provide a weighting basis for the statistics produced from the SILC.  When the results from a new Census of Population are published, the quarterly population estimates back to the previous Census of Population are revised.  The results published for the SILC 2017 incorporate the new population estimates (as calculated from the Census of Population 2016) for each year from 2012 onwards into the weighting methodology.

As results for the SILC from 2012 through to 2016 are being revised due to the new NUTS3 region classifications and the post Census 2016 population and household estimates, the Income, Consumption and Wealth (ICW) division in the CSO took the opportunity to increase the use of administrative data in the SILC process.  The process changes mostly relate to increased usage of administrative data for employee income variables and this has improved the quality of the data from 2012 onwards.  While applying the process changes to the periods in question a number of corrections were made to further improve the quality of the data.  The revised estimates for at risk of poverty, consistent poverty, enforced deprivation, Gini coefficient and quintile share ratio are not statistically significantly different from the pre-revision estimates.

* Please see http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts/history for further details.

Summary of main findings

• In 2017, the nominal median annual equivalised disposable income was €20,869 representing an increase of 2.6% on the nominal 2016 value of €20,331.  The real* median annual equivalised disposable income was €20,608, an increase of 2.5% on the previous year’s figure.  These changes are not statistically significant.  
• The Gini coefficient in 2017 was 31.5% compared with 30.7% in 2016. This change is not statistically significant.
• The quintile share ratio was 4.8 in 2017 compared with 4.7 in 2016.  This change is not statistically significant.
• In 2017, the at risk of poverty rate was 15.7% compared with 16.2% in 2016.  The change is not statistically significant.
• Enforced deprivation was experienced by 18.8% of the population, down from 21.0% in 2016.  This change is statistically significant. The deprivation rate for those at risk of poverty was 42.8% in 2017, down from 50.4% in 2016. This change is also statistically significant.
• The consistent poverty rate was 6.7%, a statistically significant change on the 2016 figure of 8.2%. 

*Real Income figures are based on 2012 prices.