Press Statement - A Snapshot of Well-being in Ireland November 2024

Statistician's Comment

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (19 November 2024) published an update to our Well-being Information Hub, which reports on the well-being of the nation.

The Well-being Information Hub was launched in October 2021 and contains 35 indicators across 11 areas which include the economy, the environment, and our society. It attempts to answer essential questions such as – how we are doing as a country, as communities, and as individuals. Some indicators may have older reference points which we are working to update and we will advise users of these updates as they occur.

Commenting on the CSO Well-being Information Hub, Morgan O'Donnell, Statistician in the Sustainable Development Goals and Indicator Reports Division, said: “This latest update of the CSO Well-being Information Hub provides a broadly positive picture of life in Ireland, with most indicators improving or remaining consistent over the long-term. However some groups performed less well than others. The indicators generally compare well with the equivalent EU indicators.

For more information on how the Government uses the Well-being indicators please see Understanding life in Ireland on gov.ie."

Highlights from the Well-being Information Hub

• In 2023, the proportion of individuals rating their overall life satisfaction as high was 28.9%, up from 24.4% in 2022. A greater proportion of men (32.1%) reported high levels of overall life satisfaction compared with women (25.9%) and people aged 65 years and over were the most likely to rate their overall life satisfaction as high (35.8%).
• Regarding housing and built environment, the number of new dwelling completions rose by 1.4% in the 12 months to September 2024 from 31,400 new dwellings to 31,900. This was up 59% compared with the 12 months up to September 2019.
• Some 99% of domestic buildings constructed between 2020 and 2023 had an A Building Energy Rating (BER). As of 2023 13% of all dwellings that had been assessed had an A rating, 14% had a B rating and 34% had a C rating.
• The employment rate in Q2 2024 (74.4%) was 5.5 percentage points higher than in Q2 2019 (68.9%) and mean weekly earnings increased by 24% between 2018 and 2023, from €722 to €896.
• The at risk of poverty rate after rent and mortgage interest fell to 18% in 2023 compared with 22% in 2022, but the rate differed significantly between owner occupied households (7.2%) and rented or rent-free households (42.1%).
• In 2023, 17.9% of households with one adult and children aged under 18 years had great difficulty making ends meet, up from 9.7% for the same group in 2022. This compared with 5.8% for households with 2 adults and one to three children aged under 18 years. In 2022, households with one adult and children aged under 18 years were least likely to be highly satisfied with their amount of leisure time (3.5% compared to 19.3% on average).
• Between 2020 and 2023 the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds who felt lonely at least some of the time fell from 34.6% to 12.4%.

Future well-being

The sustainability of well-being is future focused and considers whether future generations will be able to enjoy the same level of well-being as the current generation, or even better. In the Well-being Information Hub, 15 of the 35 indicators are tagged for sustainability, and can be broadly categorised into environmental, social, and economic well-being.

The latest updates for some of the sustainability indicators across these categories are presented below and show that, as with the indicators of current well-being, while a number of indicators have positive or stable trends over the medium-term others have performed more negatively, and the distribution is not always equal across different groups in society.

Environmental

• Total greenhouse gases (in CO₂ equivalent) fell by 4% between 2017 and 2022, down from 63.1 million tonnes to 60.6 million tonnes.
• The proportion of waste generated that was sent to landfill was 15.9% in 2021, down from 25.7% in 2016, and from 47.6% in 2011.
• For domestic buildings constructed between 2020 and 2023, 99% had an A Building Energy Rating (BER).
• The percentage of Ireland's rivers that were assessed as having high or good water quality fell from 57% in the period 2010-2015 to 52% in the period 2016-2021.

Social

• In 2024, some 80% of Irish people were satisfied with how democracy works in Ireland, compared with the EU average of 58%. 
• In 2022, Almost 32% of 15-year-old Irish students had a level 3 proficiency in reading and 29% had a level 3 proficiency in mathematics, compared with 25% and 22% respectively on average across the OECD.
• Healthy life years (the number of years that a person at birth is still expected to live in a healthy condition) has fallen from 68.6 years in 2017 to 66 years in 2022 and is higher for women (66.8 years) than men (65.2 years).

Economic

• While net government worth is still negative (-€90 billion in Q2 2024) it has improved by 50% since Q2 2019 (-€180 billion).
• At a household level, median net wealth was €193,100 in 2020, up from €159,100 in 2018, however it was 57 times higher for owner-occupied households (€303,900) than rented or rent free households (€5,300) and the wealthiest 10% of all households had a net wealth value greater than €788,400 while households in the bottom 10% of the net wealth distribution had a net wealth value less than €600.