Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) 2024
On the 20th March the Central Statistics Office (CSO) published the results of the Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) 2024. 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 INOU has grave concerns on the trajectory of poverty rates for people who are unemployed. Increasing rates of poverty risk, consistent poverty and consistent deprivation for people who are unemployed indicates that social protection measures must be addressed to support people who are looking for work.
The INOU, alongside others, will continue to call for the benchmarking of social welfare rates to lift people out of poverty, and ensure people can have enough to achieve the minimum essential standard of living.
At Risk of Poverty Rate
In 2024 the at risk of poverty rate increased by 1.1 percentage points to 11.7%. If the cost of living measures were excluded from this figure, the at risk of poverty rate would have increased over the year to 14.1%.
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 34.1% an increase of 8.6 percentage points over the year.
An individual is defined as being at risk of poverty if their nominal equivalised disposable income is under the at risk of poverty threshold, i.e. 60% of the median nominal equivalised disposable income.
Enforced 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 enforced deprivation rate for 2024 was 15.7%, a decrease of 1.6 percentage points. Again this rate was higher for unemployed people, more than two times the national figure at 37.8%, which is the same rate from 2023.
Consistent Poverty Rate
At the national level the consistent poverty rate, which captures people who are at risk of poverty and experience deprivation, increased by 1.4 percentage points to 5%. The consistent poverty rate for people who identified as unemployed was 18.9%, an increase of 9.5 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 (19%); households with one adult aged under 65 years (10.1%); households with one adult with children aged under 18 years (11%); no person at work in the household (16.2%); and people whose tenure status was rented or rent free (12.5%).
