Tenure and Households in Ireland 2016-2019

Subsidised renting households 2016

This chapter examines private permanent households that availed of subsidised rent benefits on Census night 24 April 2016. The subsidised renter household definition used here is:

• Any private permanent household receiving the Housing Assistance Payment (HAP) on Census night, and/or
• Any private permanent household where at least one member of the household received Rent Supplement payment for at least 12 months and they were in receipt of this on Census night

Please note that some individuals not in receipt of Rent Supplement are included in this chapter, as they are present in households with a Rent Supplement recipient. Households are excluded from the analysis if

• the duration of their HAP payments did not overlap with Census night or
• a household member was in receipt of Rent Supplement that overlapped with Census Night, but for less than 12 months or
• their residence was a communal establishment

On Census Night, there were 13,269 private permanent households receiving HAP and 54,693 private permanent households where at least one person was in receipt of Rent Supplement. After matching these records to the Census data, and accounting for any overlap between HAP and Rent Supplement, 63,266 unique households covering 183,812 people were linked to a household record in Census 2016. See Table 6.1.

Census and administrative data has been used to provide insights about income and living arrangements on this cohort of households.

About one in three (31.2%) subsidised renting households lived in an 'apartment, flat, bedsit' in 2016, while a further one in three (29.9%) lived in a 'semi-detached house'. Just 17.0% lived in a 'detached house'. See Table 6.2 and Figure 6.1.

Three-roomed households accounted for 23.0% of subsidised renting households in 2016, while 19.9% had five rooms and 16.8% had two rooms. See Table 6.3.

About five in ten (49.2%) of subsidised renting households had one car/van, while just under one in ten (8.5%) had two car/vans and just under four in ten (37.6%) had none. See Table 6.4.

One-third (32.7%) of heads of households in subsidised renting were unemployed in 2016, while 29.0% were at work. The remaining 38.8% were not in the labour force. See Table 6.5 and Figure 6.2.

Just over half (52.3%) of heads of households in subsidised renting were less than 40 years old, with one in six (13.6%) in the age group 30-34. The age group 40-49 accounted for 24.1% of this cohort while 5.4% were 65 or over. See Table 6.6.

The pattern of ages for the oldest household members in subsidised renting is similar to the ages of heads of households. See Table 6.7.

Looking at five year age groups, heads of subsidised households are most likely to be aged between 30 and 34 years old, with 16.3% of in this category. See Table 6.6.

The eldest person in the household is most likely to be 35 to 39 years old, with 16.0% of eldest household members in this category. See Table 6.7.

The average age of persons in subsidised renting households was 25.9 years in 2016, nearly eight years younger than the national average of 37.4. The highest average age of persons in this group of households was 28.8 in Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown while the lowest was in South Dublin at 23.3, see Table 6.8.

In all, 90,236 people living in subsided renting households were at work, school or college. Of these, over nine in ten (93.3%)  were living within one hour of work, school or college.  See Table 6.9.

Three in ten (30.0%) subsidised renting households were a 'one parent (female) household', while just under three in ten (29.3%) were a 'couple with children'. 'Single person household' accounted for 25.8%. See Table 6.10.

Economic status, employment and earnings for persons aged 15 years and over in subsidised renting households

Table 6.5 presented the Census economic status for the head of the household. Table 6.11 presents the broader economic status for all members of subsidised renting households aged 15 and over (117,400 people). In all 29.7% of people aged 15 years and over in subsidised renting households were unemployed (either having lost or given up previous employment, or looking for a first regular job), while 27.9% were at work. In 2016 3.6% were retired.

While Chapter 3 'Income' is based on the CSO's Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC, 2017 & 2018), the following analysis is based on the integration of administrative data including the 2016 Census, see CSO report Geographical Profiles of Income in Ireland 2016 for more information.

The 'Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community', a classification system grouping business and organisations according to their activities, is commonly referred to as NACE. For this release the NACE sectors were combined into 7 major sectors. See Figure 6.4 and Table 6.12.

Just under one third (31.7%) of employment among subsidised renters in 2016 was in 'Wholesale, Transport and Accommodation', the highest proportion among the NACE categories adopted in this analysis, while the same NACE category represented 28.4% of earnings for this cohort. One quarter (25.8%) were employed in 'Public Service, Adminstration and Health', which contributed 23.8% to the earned income of this cohort.

Subsidised renters were least likely to work in 'Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing' at 1.4% employed here. This sector also contributed the least to earned income at 1.5% for this cohort.

For median earnings of HAP households only see Social Housing in Ireland - Analysis of HAP.