The income reference period of SILC in year T is the calendar year T-1, i.e. for SILC 2023 the income relates to Jan-Dec 2022.
The primary focus of the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) is the collection of information on the income and living conditions of different types of households in Ireland, in order to derive indicators on poverty, deprivation and social exclusion. It is a voluntary survey (for selected households). Up until 2020 the SILC was carried out under EU legislation (Council Regulation No 1177/2003) and commenced in Ireland in June 2003. On 01/01/2021 Council Regulation No 1177/2003 was repealed by Regulation (EU) 2019/1700.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of the operation of the SILC survey and on the subject matter itself is wide-ranging and is difficult to fully evaluate. Some key aspects that may have influenced the comparative results from 2020 and 2021 in this report are as follows:
Operational changes: Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, respondents were recruited and all interviews were conducted in person. Interviewers would visit houses, often a number of times, to encourage chosen respondents to take part. In March 2020 as the restrictions began, survey interviewing was paused for a couple of weeks and then moved to telephone interviewing (CATI) for the safety of both respondents and interviewers. The survey was quickly adapted for CATI and interviewers were set up to work from home. While we had contact details for waves 2 to 5 households, wave 1 respondents were recruited by post, inviting them to contact us. For 2022 and 2023, data collection was a mix of CAPI and CATI. These types of mode adjustments can have a significant impact on the distribution of the achieved sample. Indeed, we did see a distributional change in the tenure status for the responding households, for which we made an adjustment in the weighting. While the weighting process overall is designed to reflect society as a whole as much as possible, caution should be applied when making comparisons over time.
Behavioural changes: While temporary, societal adjustments in response to the pandemic and the consequential restrictions during 2020 and 2021 impacted the results of the survey in many ways. Some questions in SILC are subjective in nature and appear to have been influenced by the temporary conditions respondents found themselves in during lockdown. For example, the proportion that said they were Unable to afford a morning, afternoon or evening out in the last fortnight decreased 3.5 percentage points, from 7.5% in 2020 to 4.0% in 2021, while the proportion that were Unable to afford to have family or friends for a drink or meal once a month decreased from 10.3% in 2020 to 8.7% in 2021. Though these indicators are designed to focus on affordability, the socially oriented nature of them may have been influenced by restrictions. Another example could be Principal Economic Status (PES), where a respondent may or may not have considered themselves Unemployed while on an income support scheme. The nature of many of these changes appear to have been temporary and should be interpreted with caution.
Impact of temporary financial supports: Restrictions to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus led to business closures and loss of work in some sectors, particularly in businesses providing face-to-face services. This necessitated the introduction of substantial State supports for firms and workers which helped mitigate the short-term impact on household incomes. The COVID-19 income supports introduced affected households across the whole income distribution and changed the composition of deciles. The impact of these supports is analysed in the chapter ‘Impact of COVID-19 Income Supports’ in this publication. It must be noted that the counterfactual ‘without supports’ makes no attempt to estimate likely incomes from receipt of ‘traditional’ out-of-work supports, like Jobseeker's Allowance or Jobseeker's Benefit, that individuals may have been entitled to receive had COVID-19 income supports not been available. Thus, caution is advised when interpreting these results. The impact of these supports on income and poverty rates are likely to be temporary in nature as public health restrictions are removed and COVID-19 income supports are phased out.
SILC has been running as an annual survey in Ireland since 2003. The changes in regulation across household surveys introduced by Regulation 2019/1700 provided us with an opportunity to review and revise SILC methodology throughout the collection, processing and analysis phases of SILC production. We introduced these changes for the 2020 SILC survey, and therefore the year 2020 represents a break in series for the survey. See Information Note - Break in Time Series SILC 2020.
The annual Survey of Income and Living Condition (SILC) results are weighted using population estimates which are generated on an ongoing basis. 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 Please see the Information Note which compares published and revised results.
Information is collected from January to June with household interviews being conducted on a weekly basis. The income reference period for SILC is the previous calendar year. Therefore, the income referenced for the 2023 survey spans the period from January to December 2022. In 2023, the achieved sample size was 4,191 households and 10,199 individuals.
The deprivation data for SILC 2022 was published in November 2022. The remaining income related SILC 2022 data was published in February 2023. For SILC 2023 both the Enforced Deprivation publication and SILC 2023 publication were published in March 2024. The delay in publishing 2023 deprivation results was due to time required to produce 2020-2022 revised results.
In 2022 the SILC sample moved from a 5-year to a 6-year rotational sample, with both a cross-sectional and a longitudinal element. Households interviewed for the first time are Wave 1 households. Households who are interviewed in subsequent years are Wave 2 households (2nd year in the sample), Wave 3 households (3rd year in the sample), Wave 4 (4th year in the sample), Wave 5 (5th year in the sample), or Wave 6 (6th and final year in the sample). The initial sample design attempts to seed the sample with 20% for each new wave. However, due to non-response and sample attrition the waves are not evenly balanced in the sample with Wave 1 households usually tending to dominate.
The overall response rate for the SILC survey in 2023 was 36.9%. The response rate is heavily influenced by the Wave 1 response rate which was 23.9% in 2023. The response rates tend to be a lot higher for Wave 2-6 households and in 2023 the response rate for Wave 2-6 households was 59.2%.
In 2022 a new sampling methodology (which was further refined in 2023) was introduced to ensure SILC will be able to meet the precision requirements specified in the IESS regulation. Waves 1 and 2 of the SILC 2023 sample were selected using this methodology. In SILC 2023 Wave 3, 4, 5 and 6 comes from the 2018 sampling frame.
The following is a brief overview of the revised SILC sample methodology, from which Wave 1 of SILC 2023 was selected:
The Wave 1 sample methodology for SILC in 2022 was the same as the method used in 2023 with the following exception. In 2023, households were selected using probability proportional to size (PPS) of each strata. In 2022 households were selected using Neyman allocation. This involved allocating the sample across the strata according to the variability of income, where strata with large variance were allocated more of the sample.
The following is a brief overview of the 2014 SILC sample methodology, from which Waves 3-6 of SILC 2023 were selected:
A design weight is assigned to each household which is calculated as the inverse proportion to the probability with which the household was sampled.
Design weights are adjusted each year for each wave separately for non-response to bring the weights up to the current year. These weights are combined and scaled back and then calibrated to population totals for the current year.
In accordance with Eurostat recommendation, CALMAR was used to calculate the household cross-sectional weights. Benchmark information was used to gross up the data to population estimates. The benchmark estimates were based on:
Due to the “integrative” calibration method, the personal weight generated in CALMAR is equal to the household weight. Because there is no individual non-response within a household, the weights for personal cross-sectional respondents aged 16 and over are the same as the overall personal weight.
The target population for SILC are private households, and the persons living therein. As such, specific benchmark totals, to which the survey is calibrated, have been created to best reflect this.
The count of private dwellings is derived from Census, using interpolation and supplementary administrative data on new dwelling for intercensal years. To account for the shared income and expenditure definition of a household, a two-stage calibration process is used wherein the calibrated dwelling weights are applied to any multiple households within a dwelling. For estimate of number of private household number, see table 9.1.
The count of persons living in private households is derived by deducting estimates of persons outside the scope of SILC from the usually resident population estimates. Persons excluded from the SILC population benchmarks include those usually resident in hospitals; residential facilities for persons with mental and/or physical disabilities, a nursing home, or a childrens' homes; religious communities; prisons; International Protection Accommodation Services (IPAS); homeless persons; persons fleeing the Ukraine under the Beneficiaries of Temporary Protection (BOTPs). During intercensal years, a combination of linear interpolation and administrative data is used to estimate the number persons outside the scope of SILC.
Estimates were calculated in SAS using the Jackknife and the Taylor Linearisation methodology. For the mean equivalised net disposable income, the ‘At Risk of Poverty’ rate, the ‘Deprivation’ rate and the ‘Consistent Poverty’ rate, the Jackknife Method in PROC SURVEYMEANS was used. The Taylor Linearisation Method in PROC SURVEYMEANS was used to measure the precision of the quantiles. See tables 8.3, 8.4 and 8.5.
SAS routines and macros were developed to calculate the precision of the more complex statistics, i.e. the Gini Coefficient and the Quintile Share Ratio (QSR), using the Jackknife Method. The variance of the Gini and the QSR was estimated using the methodology outlined in Lohr1 Ch. 9 (Variance Estimation in Complex Surveys). The calculations of the precision estimates took into account the weighting, the complex structure of the sample, (i.e. the fact that the sample was a previously a cluster sample as well as a simple random sample) and other complications arising from the methods adopted.
When measuring the year-on-year change of a statistic, we take into account both the variance of the statistic in each year (sample) and the covariance of the statistic between samples.
1Sampling: Design and Analysis, 2nd Edition, Sharon L. Lohr (2010).
The annual SILC survey is the main data source for SILC. In response to growing concerns related to community transmission of COVID-19, the CSO suspended all household survey fieldwork activities in mid-March 2020. SILC information before the onset of COVID-19 was collected from household members (16 years and older) by CSO interviewers, using Computer-Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) in the respondents' homes. In March 2020 the CSO developed a SILC data collection instrument suitable for conducting SILC longitudinal interviews by telephone (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview (CATI)). SILC 2023 data was collected via both CAPI and CATI from January to July 2023. All most all household interviews were conducted by CAPI (4,153 out of 4,191 interviews).
In addition, CSO uses primary micro data sources in its statistical programs to complement or replace survey data, to make its statistical operations more efficient or to create new insights or products. These data enable CSO to fill information needs about the Irish society, economy and environment, reduce response burden and costs imposed by surveys, and improve data quality and timeliness. All data obtained by CSO are used solely for statistical purposes.
The primary micro data sources are the Department of Social Protection (DSP) social welfare data, Office of the Revenue Commissioners’ Income Tax Form 11 and PAYE Income data, Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine Animal Identification and Movement Data, Student Universal Support Ireland Grant Application and Payment Data, Local Authority HAP Shared Services Centre Housing Assistance Payments and the Residential Tenancies Board Rent Data. The CSO continues to work with these sources to ensure good quality data is available on a timely basis.
Income details are collected at both a household and individual level in SILC. In analysis, each individual’s income is summed up to household level and in turn added to household level income components to calculate gross household income.
The components of gross household income are:
Total income before tax, minus income from government social transfers.
Refers to cash benefits received from local and state government.
In 2022, the Government announced a series of cost-of-living measures aimed at helping households meet higher costs. The cost-of-living measures that were considered when calculating poverty rates in the analysis presented in Chapter 6 are listed below. These cost-of-living measures classified as social transfer and included in their appropriate social transfer component.
Between March and May 2022, the following cost-of-living measures, aimed at helping households pay higher energy bills were introduced:
In July 2022, the rates of payments for the Back-to-School Clothing and Footwear Allowance scheme were increased by €100 for each eligible child.
Budget 2023 contained additional cost-of-living measures that were paid to individuals and households during the latter part of 2022. Budget cost-of-living measures that were paid/implemented in 2022 included:
The income reference period of SILC in year T is the calendar year T-1, therefore 2023 poverty rates were calculated by using January to December 2022 income. The electricity credits that households received in 2022 are treated as income in the SILC survey.
Market income and social transfers are summed at household level to generate gross household income before any deductions are taken.
Tax and social insurance contributions are also summed to household level and subtracted from the gross household income to calculate the total disposable household income. The components of disposable household income are gross household income less:
Both nominal and real income figures are included in this release. Real income figures have been adjusted for inflation by applying a deflator to the nominal income figures. The deflator is derived from the monthly CPI and takes into account the rolling nature of the income data collected by SILC.
The time-series presented in this publication begins with SILC 2020, where the income relates to the 2019 calendar year. As such, a base income year of 2019 is used to adjust for inflation. Over the calendar year of 2022 (the income reference period for SILC 2023), the annual CPI varied from +5% in January to +9.2% in October 2022, see the CSO’s Consumer Price Index December 2022.
Equivalence scales are used to calculate the equivalised household size in a household. Although there are numerous scales, we focus on the national scale in this release. The national scale attributes a weight of 1 to the first adult, 0.66 to each subsequent adult (aged 14+ living in the household) and 0.33 to each child aged less than 14. The weights for each household are then summed to calculate the equivalised household size.
Disposable household income is divided by the equivalised household size to calculate equivalised disposable income for each person, which essentially is an approximate measure of how much of the income can be attributed to each member of the household. This equivalised income is then applied to each member of the household.
From 2020 the question on Principal Economic Status was standardised under Regulation (EU) 2019/1700. The categories are:
From 2020, the highest level of education achieved is mapped using the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED 2011) coding system and categorised as follows:
| ISCED code | Highest Level of Education Classification |
|---|---|
| 000 Less than primary education | Primary or below |
| 100 Primary education | |
| 200 Lower secondary education | Lower secondary (including transition year) |
| 300 Upper secondary education (not further specified) | Upper secondary |
| 343 Level completion, without direct access to tertiary education | |
| 300 Upper secondary education (not further specified) | |
| 344 Level completion, with direct access to tertiary education | |
| 300 Upper secondary education (not further specified) | |
| 450 Vocational education | Post leaving certificate |
| 400 Post-secondary non-tertiary education (not further specified) | |
| 500 Short cycle tertiary | Third level non-degree |
| 600 Bachelor or equivalent | Third level degree or higher |
| 700 Master or equivalent | |
| 800 Doctorate or equivalent |
For the purposes of deriving household composition, a child was defined as any member of the household aged 17 or under. Households were analysed as a whole, regardless of the number of family units within the household. The categories of household composition are:
The categories of household type are:
The number of persons at work in the household is the number of persons that described their Principal Economic Status as Employed.
Tenure status refers to the nature of the accommodation in which the household resides. The status is provided by the respondent during the interview and responses are classified into the following two categories:
Further tenure specification is also provided for at risk of poverty after rent and mortgage interest:
Households categorised as Rented: from Local Authority are those that stated they rent from the Local Authority and for whom there is no indication of a housing support in the form of Rent Supplement, Rental Accommodation Scheme (RAS), or Housing Assistance Payment (HAP). Those categorised as Rented: other forms of social housing support were in receipt of Rent Supplement, RAS, or HAP. Households Rented: without housing supports are those households paying rent but not living in local authority housing nor found to be in receipt of Rent Supplement, RAS or HAP.
From 2020 onwards, areas are now classified as Urban or Rural based on the following area populations derived from Census of Population 2016:
Urban
Rural
The regional classifications in this release are based on the NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units) classification used by Eurostat. The NUTS boundaries were amended on 21st November 2016 under Regulation (EC) No.2066/2016 and took effect from 1st January 2018. Results are presented at NUTS 2 level. See Information Note for Data Users: revision to the Irish NUTS 2 and NUTS 3 Regions.
This is the share of persons with an equivalised income below a given percentage (usually 60%) of the national median income. It is also calculated at 40%, 50% and 70% for comparison. The rate is calculated by ranking persons by equivalised income from smallest to largest and then extracting the median or middle value. Anyone with an equivalised income of less than 60% of the median is considered at risk of poverty at a 60% level.
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, are considered to be deprived. The identification of the marginalised or deprived is currently achieved on the basis of a set of eleven basic deprivation indicators:
Individuals who experience two or more of the eleven listed items are considered to be experiencing enforced deprivation. This is the basis for calculating the deprivation rate.
The consistent poverty measure looks at those persons who are defined as being at risk of poverty and experiencing enforced deprivation (experiencing two or more types of deprivation).
An individual is defined as being in ‘consistent poverty’ if they are
The consistent poverty excluding cost-of-living measures looks at those persons who are defined as being at risk of poverty excluding cost-of-living measures and experiencing enforced deprivation (experiencing two or more types of deprivation).
An individual is defined as being in ‘consistent poverty excluding cost-of-living measures’ if they are
This is the difference between the median equivalised income of persons below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold and the at-risk-of-poverty threshold, expressed as a percentage of the at-risk-of-poverty threshold. The purpose of the indicator is to measure how far below the poverty threshold the median income of people at risk of poverty is. The closer the median income of those at risk of poverty is to the at risk of poverty threshold the smaller the percentage will be.
This indicator is calculated based on an alternative measure of equivalised income, excluding all social transfers. From 2020, social transfers in SILC refers to cash benefits received from local and state government. Any person with an equivalised income before social transfers of less than 60% of the median after social transfers is considered at risk of poverty before social transfers (i.e. the same threshold is used for calculating the rate before and after social transfers).
This indicator is calculated based on an alternative measure of equivalised income, excluding the total rent paid and mortgage interest. The total rent paid includes housing supports such as the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP), Rent Supplement, Rental Assistance Scheme (RAS) which were included in the household income. Any person with an equivalised income after rent and mortgage interest of less than 60% of the median before rent and mortgage interest is considered at risk of poverty after rent and mortgage interest (i.e. the same threshold is used for calculating the rate before and after rent and mortgage interest is deducted).
For a given year, the “at risk of poverty rate anchored at a moment in time” is the share of the population whose income in a given year is below the at risk of poverty threshold calculated in the standard way for a previous base year and then adjusted for inflation. The purpose of this indicator is to get some indication of the changes in ‘absolute poverty’ over time. The deflator is derived from the monthly CPI and takes into account the rolling nature of the income data collected by SILC.
This indicator is calculated based on an alternative measure of equivalised income which excluded the 2022 cost-of-living measures. Any person with an equivalised income excluding cost-of-living measures of less than the standard at risk of poverty threshold (€16,558) is considered at risk of poverty excluding cost-of-living measures.
This is the relationship between cumulative shares of the population (ranked according to the level of income from lowest to highest) and the cumulative share of total income received by them, i.e. the Lorenz Curve. If there was perfect equality (i.e. each person receives the same income) the Gini coefficient would be 0%. A Gini coefficient of 100% would indicate there was total inequality and the entire national income was in the hands of one person.
Calculation of the Gini Coefficient
Wgti = Final calibrated weight per individual
Eq_Inci= Equivalised disposable income
This is the ratio of the total equivalised income received by the 20% of persons with the highest income (top quintile) to that received by the 20% of persons with the lowest income (lowest quintile).
Estimates produced from SILC data by the CSO are based on national definitions of income, equivalence scale, deprivation etc. These are not directly comparable with EU-SILC estimates produced on the Eurostat website. See the Eurostat webpage on Income and Living Conditions for further details.
The Central Statistics Office wishes to thank the participating households for their co-operation in agreeing to take part in the SILC survey and for facilitating the collection of the relevant data.
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