This release is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources. For further information on the data sources, linking procedures, and limitations of this release, see the Background Notes section.
This release is based on linking administrative income data with those who indicated they were living in private households in Census 2022. When calculating household income, estimates for some households are underestimated, as not all income sources are included, such as undeclared employment income, inter-household transfers, and some foreign pensions. Throughout this release, the term administrative income will be used to describe the income sources covered.
Equivalised income allows for a more meaningful comparison of income across households by accounting for the number of adults and children living in the household, thus allowing for analysis at an individualised level. The term low-income threshold refers to households with an equivalised net administrative income of below 60% of the national median equivalised net income as derived from administrative data sources. In this release, the low-income threshold is deemed to be €16,271.
This release focuses on children aged under 18, living in private households with one or both parents.
This chapter looks at the proportion of children aged under 18, living in private households with one or both parents, that fall under the low-income threshold (60% of the 2022 national median equivalised net administrative income) by the characteristics of the household.
In Census 2022, people were asked to indicate the extent to which they experienced any long-lasting conditions or difficulties, such as blindness or vision impairment, or difficulty going outside the home. This publication analyses the proportion of children below the low-income threshold by whether there was a child under, or a parent of a child under 18, or any person in a household with a long-lasting condition or difficulty experienced to any extent. Note that this includes functional difficulties experienced due to old age.
In 2022, 18.5% of children living in a household where any member of the household has a long-lasting condition or difficulty were below the low-income threshold, compared with 14.5% of children where there was no such person.
One in five (20.0%) children with a parent in the household who had a long-lasting condition or difficulty were below the low-income threshold, compared with 14.1% of children where no parent in the household had such.
The proportion of children living below the low-income threshold increased for children living in larger households.
In 2022, 12.6% of children living in households containing one child under 18 years of age were below the low-income threshold, compared with 45.6% of children in households with five or more children.
Children living in one-parent households had a higher risk of being below the low-income threshold. Three in ten children of single mothers (30.1%) and single fathers (29.3%) were below the low-income threshold, compared with one in five (20.9%) children of cohabiting couples and one in eight (12.2%) children of married couples.
Across all family units, as the number of children under 18 increased, so too did the risk of those children falling below the low-income threshold. For example, looking at households of married parents with children, 9.2% of children were under the low-income threshold if there were two children aged under 18 in the household, this doubled to 20.3% if there were four children aged under 18 in the household.
Children in one-parent households were more likely to live below the low-income threshold than children in two-parent married households at every family size, and the gap widened with each additional child up to four children. The proportion of children below the threshold in single mother households rose from 20.4% for those with one child to 50.5% for those with four children, an increase of 30.1 percentage points. Over the same range, the rate for married two-parent households rose from 9.1% to 20.3%, an increase of 11.2 percentage points. For households containing five or more children under 18 the gap narrows somewhat, with 41.1% of children in married two-parent households below the low-income threshold, compared with 59.4% in single mother households and 56.5% in single father households.
By nature of occupancy, 7.9% of children living in homes that were owner-occupied with a loan or mortgage were below the low-income threshold. This compared with 42.5% of children living in homes rented from a local authority.
Further disaggregating of the nature of occupancy by the type of urban or rural area shows similar trends across the area types.
For children living in homes that were owner-occupied with a loan or mortgage, 5.2% were below the low-income threshold if living in a city, compared with 13.9% of children of such households in highly rural or remote areas.
Meanwhile, for children living in homes rented from a local authority, over one in three (37.9%) were below the low-income threshold if living in a city, compared with almost half (47.8%) of children of such households in highly rural or remote areas.
Among children living in homes rented from private landlords, 31.4% were below the low-income threshold in highly rural or remote areas, twice the rate of such households living in cities (14.0%), a difference of 17.4 percentage points.
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