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 (for selected respondents) survey of private households. It is carried out under EU legislation (Council Regulation No 1177/2003) and commenced in Ireland in June 2003.
Each year, ad hoc modules are carried out in order to complement variables collected as part of the SILC survey. The title of the 2013 SILC ad hoc module was ‘Well-being’, and many of the questions collected were also repeated in the 2018 module, which was titled ‘Material deprivation, well-being and housing difficulties’.
Information is collected continuously throughout the year with household interviews being conducted on a weekly basis. In 2018, the achieved sample size was 4,382 households and 11,130 individuals, while in 2013 the achieved sample size was 4,922 households and 12,663 individuals.
The 2013 and 2018 ad hoc module questions were asked of each respondent aged 16 years and above. Due to the subjective nature of these questions, proxy interviews (where a household member answers questions on behalf of another member who is not present at the time of interview) were not allowed for the module questions. The overall response rate for the 2013 module was 65%, while corresponding rate for the 2018 module was 64%.
The following is a brief overview of the SILC sample methodology:
The annual SILC survey is the main data source for SILC. Information is collected from all household members on tablets by trained interviewers, using Computer-Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) software.
In addition, the CSO has two primary micro data sources. These are the Department of Social Protection (DSP) social welfare data and Revenue Commissioners’ employee income data. The CSO continues to work with DSP and Revenue to ensure good quality data is available on a timely basis.
A design weight is assigned to each household which is calculated as the inverse proportion to the probability with which the household was sampled. For SILC, the probability of the selection of a household is based on two elements; the probability of the selection of a block and the probability of selection of a household within that block. These weights are then calibrated to known population totals from census data and Labour Force Survey (LFS) data using the CALMAR macro in SAS. This final weight is then applied to each individual in the household.
As a result of only taking direct responses in the 2013 and 2018 modules, the personal weights calculated as part of the core SILC survey had to be modified to account for the lack of coverage in the modules among particular groups of individuals. This was achieved by adjusting each personal weight based on the response rates of certain classes, which were based on age, sex, principal economic status and equivalised disposable income quintile. These adjusted weights were then calibrated to the estimated totals obtained by the core SILC survey to ensure consistency with the core SILC results.
At date of publication, figures on the Eurostat website are provisional and not based on these new weights, and as such may differ slightly from this publication.
For more information regarding weighting and calibration, see here.
Tenure status refers to the nature of the accommodation in which the individual resides. The status is provided by the respondent of the household questionnaire during the interview and responses are classified into the following four categories:
Marital status refers to the current marital status of the respondent, and is based on a question with the following response categories:
A five-point scale was used to measure the self-perceived health status of respondents:
Due to lack of coverage in particular in the two lowest categories, the responses were grouped as ‘Very good’, ‘Good’ and ‘Fair/Bad/Very bad’ in order to achieve appropriate sample sizes in each group.
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:
Employer’s social insurance contributions
Regular inter-household cash transfer paid
Tax (including USC) on income and social insurance contributions
Tax deducted at source from individual private pension plans
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. Disposable household income is divided by the equivalised household size to calculate equivalised disposable income for each household, which is then applied to each person in the household.
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 follow indicators were collected as part of the modules in 2013 and 2018:
Each respondent is asked to describe their satisfaction on a 10 point scale. This is a subjective measure of one’s satisfaction level.
Households were asked whether there was access to material or non-material help.
Do you feel that if you needed material help (e.g. money, loan or an object) you could receive it from relatives, friends, neighbours or other persons that you know?
Do you feel that if you needed non-material help (e.g. somebody to talk to, help with doing something or collecting something) you could receive it from relatives, friends, neighbours or other persons that you know?
The following indicators were collected to assess emotional well-being in respondents:
The reference period for these indicators was the four-week period preceding the interview. The possible answers were:
*Only collected in 2018
The Central Statistics Office would like to thank Graduate Cian O’Brien for his contribution in the compilation of this module.
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