This report focuses on permanent private households and persons in permanent private households. The definitions of a private household as applied by Census, the Labour Force Survey (LFS), EU-SILC, and Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) are detailed below.
Census definition of private household
A private household comprises either one person living alone or a group of people (not necessarily related) living at the same address with common housekeeping arrangements - that is, sharing at least one meal a day or sharing a living room or sitting room. In order to be included in the household, a person had to be a usual resident at the time of the census. Therefore, visitors to the household on Census Night were excluded, while usual residents temporarily absent (for less than 12 months) were included.
Labour Force Survey definition of private household
Source: Standard Report on Methods and Quality for the Labour Force Survey (LFS2019 - Quarter 3
The survey population is individuals living in private households. It therefore excludes individuals living in institutions or communal accommodation and persons of no fixed abode. The collection units are households containing at least one individual aged 15 years or over for whom it is the main residence. Information is collected on each individual within a surveyed household.
All ‘usual residents ' in responding households are surveyed. Where a particular individual is not available for interview, information can be provided by another member of the household in most circumstances via a proxy interview. A proxy interview refers to data which is collected from another member of the household due to the unavailability of the specific respondent at the time of the interview.
A person is defined as a "Usual Resident" of a private household if he or she
(i) Lives regularly at the dwelling in question
and
(ii) Shares the main living accommodation (i.e. kitchen, living room or bathroom) with the other members of the household.
EU-SILC definition of private household
Source: Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) 2018 - Background Notes
The Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) is a voluntary (for selected respondents) survey of private households. Information is collected from all household members. Households were analysed as a whole, regardless of the number of family units within the household.
HFCS definition of private household
Source: Household Finance and Consumption Survey 2018 – Background Notes
A household was defined as a single person or group of people who regularly reside together in the same accommodation and who share the same catering arrangements. The household members were not necessarily related by blood or marriage. The HFCS had a further requirement that dwellings where members were financially independent of each other were to be considered separate households. Institutional households, (e.g. nursing homes, barracks, boarding schools, hotels etc.) were not covered by the survey.
Tenure status
Tenure status refers to the nature of the occupancy in which the household resides. It is constructed throughout this report as:
where
*'Own with a mortgage or a loan' and 'Owned outright' are a single combined category as 'Owner occupied' in Labour Force Survey
[]Occupied free of rent is separated for Census results.
~Other tenure is employed for LFS tenure categories that do not meet the definitions above including situations where
- Occupants are renting but there is no information regarding whether the tenancy is with a Local Authority
or
-The tenure is not owned by occupants and is rent-free to some residents only
Family Units
The census defines family unit or nucleus is as:
(1) a husband and wife or a co-habiting couple; or
(2) a husband and wife or a co-habiting couple together with one or more usually resident never-married children (of any age); or
(3) one parent together with one or more usually resident never-married children (of any age).
Family members must be usual residents of the relevant household.
The determination of household and family composition is based on responses to the question on the census form dealing with relationships within the household.
Throughout this report, family units, which may include other persons, are categorised as
Dwelling types
This report uses the following classification of dwelling types
*Other is not applicable in Census & LFS where Not stated is adopted instead.
Census definitions
Principal Economic Status
The labour force is comprised of all persons at work, looking for their first job or unemployed, while students, homemakers, retired persons and those unable to work are categorised as being not in the labour force. For further details on the Census definition of Economic Status and official estimates of the labour force from the Labour Force Survey see Census of Population 2016 – Profile 11 Employment, Occupations and Industry.
De facto versus Usual Residence
The analysis of census data in this report focuses on persons usually resident. The date of the census was chosen to coincide with a period when passenger movements were at a minimum and, consequently, the figures closely approximate to those for the normally resident population. The de facto measure of the population, referred to throughout this report, was 4,761,865 in April 2016 while the usually resident total was 4,689,921, a difference of 71,944 or 1.5%. The usually resident measure is used when analysing topics such as nationality and households and families.
Household Reference Person
The reference person in each private household is the first person in the household identified as a parent, spouse, cohabiting partner or head of a non-family household containing related persons. Where no person in the household satisfied these criteria, the first usually resident person was used as the reference person.
For the purposes of expressing the household reference person in simple terms for the reader, the terms head of household or householder are used instead of the household reference person in this report.
Size of Household
The number of persons in a household consists of the total number of persons usually resident there on the night of Sunday, 24 April 2016, including those absent from the household for less than twelve months. Visitors present in the household on census night are excluded.
Number of Rooms
The number of rooms occupied by a private household is the total number used by the household. This includes kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms, conservatories you can sit in and studies, but excluding bathrooms, toilets, kitchenettes, utility rooms consulting rooms, offices, shops, halls, landings and rooms that can only be used for storage such as cupboards.
ILO Labour Force Classification
The primary classification used for the LFS results is the ILO (International Labour Office) labour force classification. Labour Force Survey data on this basis have been published since 1988. The ILO classification distinguishes the following main subgroups of the population aged 15 or over:
In Employment: Persons who worked in the week before the survey for one hour or more for payment or profit, including work on the family farm or business and all persons who had a job but were not at work because of illness, holidays etc. in the week.
Unemployed: Persons who, in the week before the survey, were without work and available for work within the next two weeks, and had taken specific steps, in the preceding four weeks, to find work. It should be noted that as per Eurostat’s operational implementation, the upper age limit for classifying a person as unemployed is 74 years.
Inactive Population (not in labour force): All other persons.
The labour force comprises persons employed plus unemployed.
Participation, Employment and Unemployment Rates
The rates given in this release are based on the ILO classification. The Participation Rate is the number of persons in the labour force expressed as a percentage of the total population aged 15 or over. The Employment Rate is the number of employed aged 15 to 64 expressed as a percentage of the total population aged 15 to 64.
To ensure coherence with Unemployment Rates produced by Eurostat, the CSO changed the method of calculation of the Unemployment Rate as of Q2 2015. Prior to this, the Unemployment Rate was calculated as the number of unemployed expressed as a percentage of the total labour force aged 15 and over. The change introduced limits the labour force to persons aged 15-74 and this excludes a small number of persons aged 75 and over in employment from the total labour force used in the calculation. The overall impact of this change was minimal.
Jobless Households
The Labour Force Survey is the official source of data for the jobless household indicator.
The indicator "People aged 18 - 59 years living in jobless households" is calculated as the share of persons aged 18 - 59 who are living in households where no one is in employment. Students aged 18 - 24 who live in households composed solely of students (persons who have indicated that their Principal Economic Status is Student) of the same age class are not included. The indicator "People aged 0 - 17 years living in jobless households" is calculated as the share of persons aged 0 - 17 who are living in households where no one is in employment.
Atypical work
Atypical work patterns include those who those whose employment consists of shift work, evening work, night work, or work on a Saturday or Sunday.
Definitions of Income
Gross income
Income details are collected at both a household and individual level in SILC. In analysis, each individual’s income is summed up to household level and in turn added to household level income components to calculate gross household income.
The components of gross household income are:
Direct Income
Other direct income
Social Transfers
Disposable income
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:
Nominal income figures
Nominal income figures are included in this release.
Equivalence scales
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. The weights for each household are then summed to calculate the equivalised household size.
Equivalised disposable household Income
Disposable household income is divided by the equivalised household size to calculate equivalised disposable income for each person, which essentially is an approximate measure of how much of the income can be attributed to each member of the household. This equivalised income is then applied to each member of the household.
Poverty indicators:
At risk of poverty rate
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.
Deprivation rate
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.
Consistent poverty
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
Gini coefficient
This is the relationship between cumulative shares of the population (ranked according to the level of income from lowest to highest) and the cumulative share of total income received by them, i.e. the Lorenz Curve. If there was perfect equality (i.e. each person receives the same income) the Gini coefficient would be 0%. A Gini coefficient of 100% would indicate there was total inequality and the entire national income was in the hands of one person.
Inequality of income distribution (S80/S20) quintile share ratio
This is the ratio of the average equivalised income received by the 20% of persons with the highest income (top quintile) to that received by the 20% of persons with the lowest income (lowest quintile).
Real Assets
Household Main Residence
This is defined as the dwelling where the members of the household usually live, typically a house or an apartment. A household can only have one main residence at any given time, although they may share the residence with people not belonging to the household
Self-employment business
These are businesses in which somebody in the household is either self-employed in or has an active part in running the business. Examples would include a self-employed plumber, partner in an accounting firm or the director and part-owner of a haulage company.
Valuables
This includes items such as jewellery, works of art, antiques etc.
Financial Assets
Savings
This includes items such as all types of deposit and savings accounts as well as positive balance on current accounts.
Bonds
These are bearer instruments, are usually negotiable but do not grant the holder any ownership rights to the institutional unit issuing them. They provide the holder with the unconditional right to a fixed or contractually determined variable money income in the form of coupon payments (interest) and/or a stated fixed sum on a specified date or dates or starting from a date fixed at the time of issue. The issuer owes the holders a debt and is obliged to repay the principal and interest (the coupon) at a later date, termed maturity. A bond is generally transferrable from one person to another. For the purposes of HFCS, Post Office savings bonds and prize bonds are classified as ‘Bonds’.
Mutual funds
Money market funds (MMF) are defined as those collective investment undertakings the shares/units of which are, in terms of liquidity, close substitutes for deposits. They are funds primarily invested in money market instruments, MMF shares/units and in other transferable debt instruments with a residual maturity of up to and including one year.
Publicly Traded Shares
Publicly traded shares are shares that are listed on a stock exchange or other form of secondary market, i.e. they can be bought and sold there.
Voluntary Pensions
These are personal (voluntary) plans, access to which is not linked to an employment relationship. Individuals independently purchase and select material aspects of the arrangements without intervention of their employers. Some personal plans may have restricted membership (e.g. to the self-employed, to members of a particular craft or trade association, to individuals who do not already belong to an occupational plan, etc).
Gross Wealth
This is defined as the sum of real and financial assets.
Only certain assets and liabilities are included. In particular, the present value of all future, expected defined benefit pensions is excluded, which can be a sizable portion of the wealth of many households. The present value of future, voluntary, expected defined contribution pensions is included.
Net Wealth
This is defined as gross wealth less total debt.
Subsidised renting households
This chapter examines households that availed of subsidised rent benefits on Census night 24 April 2016. The definition used of subsidised rent benefits used here is:
Please note that some individuals not in receipt of rent supplement are included in this definition, as they are present in households with a rent supplement recipient.
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