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 report, see the Background Notes.
Just under half (47.5%) of households in Ireland had a gross household income of less than €60,000 in 2022, increasing to almost two thirds (63.4%) of households in Donegal and falling to just over one third (34.7%) in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown.
At the upper end of the income distribution, 4.3% of households had a gross household income of €200,000 or above, decreasing to 1% of households in Donegal and rising to 14.6% in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown.
The majority (85%) of gross household income came from market income in 2022, comprised of employee income (66.3%), self-employment income (11.2%), private or occupational pensions (5.5%), and rental income (1.9%). The remaining 15% came from social transfers, primarily pension (6.1%), illness, disability and caring (3.5%) and working age income supports (2.1%).
The administrative county where the largest share of gross income came from market income was Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown (92.4%), while that with the least was Donegal (74.8%).
A household where over half of its household income came from social welfare transfers is classed as having social transfers as its majority income source.
The following Local Electoral Areas (LEA), Belmullet in Mayo (49.8%), Carndonagh (47.3%) and Glenties (45.8%) both in Donegal, had the largest proportion of households where social welfare transfers was the majority of income.
The top three LEAs where social welfare pension was the majority of household income were Belmullet in Mayo (27.8% of households), followed by Glenties (24.7%), and Carndonagh (24.0%) both in Donegal.
The three LEAs with the highest proportion of households where working age social welfare was majority of household income (i.e. social transfers excluding child benefits and state pension) were Tallaght South in Dublin (20.4%), Longford in Co. Longford (20.1%), and Waterford City South (19.7%).
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