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This publication 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 2023, households in the top 20% of the income distribution had gross disposable incomes twice the national average of €83,058. Households in the bottom 20% had gross disposable incomes which were more than two-fifths (42%) of the national average.
In 2023, the top 20% of households had gross disposable incomes which were nearly five times (4.7) higher than the bottom 20% of households, down from a peak of 5.6 times higher in 2014.
The most important source of income for all income groups, or quintiles of the income distribution, was compensation of employees in 2023.
Households in the top 20% of the income distribution consumed twice as much as the bottom 20% of households in 2023.
Expenditure on essentials such as food, beverages, housing, and energy accounted for 46% of expenditure for households in the bottom 20% of the income distribution in 2023. For the top 20%, the figure was lower at 34%.
In 2023, the bottom 40% of households in the income distribution had negative savings as did households which rented their dwelling.
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (17 April 2025) published Household Distributional Accounts 2023.
Commenting on the release, Justin Flannery, Statistician in the National Accounts Integration Division, said:
“Household Distributional Accounts is an experimental release which provides distributional information on income, consumption, and savings consistent with annual national accounts.
The results indicate that gross disposable income for the top 20% of households was 4.7 times higher than the bottom 20% of households in 2023. Consumption was more equal than this, with the top 20% of households consuming 1.9 times more than the bottom 20%.
Looking at income and consumption, the results imply that only the top 60% of households had savings in 2023. While considering tenure status, referring to the nature of the occupancy in which the household resides, only homeowners had savings in 2023. Tenants had negative savings, i.e. their consumption exceeded their gross disposable income.
This release includes data for the period affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The results show that the increase in household savings during that time occurred across all groups, or quintiles, of the income distribution.”