The Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) identifies people living in enforced deprivation as those who cannot afford two of 11 basic deprivation indicators. See Survey on Income and Living Conditions Fact Sheet.
In 2025, the most common deprivation items (see At Risk of Poverty Indicators Explained (PDF 1,094KB) ) for people aged 16 years and older were; being unable to afford to replace worn out furniture (15.0%), unable to afford a morning, afternoon or evening out in the last fortnight (9.5%) and unable to afford to get together once a month with family or friends for a drink or a meal (9.2%). See figure 2.1 and table 2.1.
The Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI) measures long-standing health related activity limitations. The Editor’s Note in the Key Findings section of this report describes the questions used to derive the GALI status of survey respondents aged 16 years and older.
People ‘severely limited’ in usual activities for at least six months, had higher rates of deprivation for all of the 11 deprivation indicators compared with those ‘not limited’.
Enforced deprivation - households experiencing two or more of the 11 deprivation items of people aged 16 years and older decreased by 0.1 percentage point, from 14.1% in 2024 to 14.0% in 2025.
In 2025, the enforced deprivation rate for those ‘severely limited’ increased by over six percentages points to 34.3% in 2025 from 28.2% in 2024. The enforced deprivation rate for people who were ‘limited but not severely’ was 23.4% in 2025 (up from 20.1% in 2024) and for those ‘not limited’, the 2025 rate was 10.9%, down from 12.2% in 2024. See figure 2.3 and table 2.3.
Survey respondents aged 16 years and over were asked two additional questions related to their health.
The first one related to self-perceived general health:
Q. How would you describe your health in general? Is it:
The second related to the presence of chronic morbidity:
Q. Do you have any long-standing illness or longstanding health problem? By long-standing I mean illnesses or health problems which have lasted, or are expected to last, for six months or more.
Analysis of enforced deprivation rates by self-perceived general health status shows that people with bad health have much higher rates of enforced deprivation when compared to those with good health. The enforced deprivation rate for those reporting ‘very bad’ health was 33.0%, over a five percentage point increase from 2024 (27.8%), and over four times the rate of those reporting ‘very good’ health (8.2%). See figure 2.4 and table 2.4.
People with a self-reported chronic illness had an enforced deprivation rate twice that of those without a chronic illness (21.8% and 10.8% respectively). See figure 2.5 and table 2.5.
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