This release is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output and is based on linking administrative income data with the 2022 Census population living in private households. 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.
As a CSO Frontier Series release, 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.
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. In this publication, the reference person is referred to as the ‘head of household’. For household level income analysis by ethnicity, the ethnicity refers to that of the head of household.
The question on ethnic group or background was updated for Census 2022 with new response categories added including Roma, Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi and Arab. For further information, see Census of Population 2022 Profile 5 - Diversity, Migration, Ethnicity, Irish Travellers & Religion.
Household gross administrative income is defined here as income from administrative sources such as employment income from Revenue and social welfare income from Department of Social Protection. It does not include investment income from stocks and shares, interhousehold-transfers or income earned abroad and not declared in Ireland. For further information, see the Background Notes.
In 2022, households where the head of household had an ethnic group/background of Asian or Asian Irish - Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi had the highest median gross household administrative income at €88,069. The largest population group, White Irish households, had a median gross household administrative income of €60,594. The lowest was for households identifying as White Irish Traveller where the median gross household administrative income was €37,109.
A CSO publication on employee earnings by nationality found that Indian nationals had the highest median weekly earnings in 2024 (€876.04), followed by United Kingdom nationals (€780.00) and Irish nationals (€762.72). For further information see Distribution of Earnings by Nationality 2024.
Households where the head of household had an ethnic group/background of Asian or Asian Irish - Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi had the highest proportion of gross income from market income sources, such as employment and private pension income, at 93.9% (€95,219). This was followed by households where the head of household identified as Asian or Asian Irish – Chinese with 91.8% (€65,897) of gross household administrative income coming from market sources, and Asian or Asian Irish - any other Asian background at 91.4% (€84,626). The largest population group, White Irish households, had 84.7% (€67,475) of gross household administrative income from market sources.
Households where the head of household identified as White Irish Traveller were most reliant on social transfers with 80.3% (€33,723) of gross household administrative income coming from social welfare sources.
From Census 2022, 18.5% of White Irish Travellers had a principal economic status of ‘unable to work due to permanent sickness or disability’, while the rate for the general population was 4.6%, see F5087. This is reflected in the income from social welfare sources, where 39.9% (€16,734) of the average gross household administrative income of White Irish Traveller households comes from Illness, disability and caring supports.
Households where the head of household had an ethnic group/background of Asian or Asian Irish - Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi contributed the highest proportion of gross income in tax and social insurance contributions, at 25.7% (€26,066), followed by Arab at 24.1% (€19,271), and Asian or Asian Irish - Chinese at 22.8% (€16,374).
Equivalised net administrative 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. White Irish households have the lowest mean equivalised household size (1.93), while White Irish Traveller households have the highest (2.47). In addition, White Irish Traveller households have the highest mean number of children under 18 per dwelling at 1.64 compared with 0.62 for White Irish households, while households where the head of household had an ethnic group/background of Asian or Asian Irish - Any other Asian background had the highest mean number of adults aged 18 to 64 per dwelling at 2.31 compared with 1.58 for White Irish households. For further information, see the Background Notes.
After accounting for household size, persons identifying as Asian or Asian Irish - Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi had the highest median equivalised net administrative income (€30,155), followed by White Irish (€28,003) and Asian or Asian Irish - any other Asian background (€27,945). Persons identifying as White Irish Traveller had the lowest median equivalised net administrative income at €15,452.
Taking 60% of the national median equivalised net administrative income, €27,119, we can derive a low-administrative-income threshold of €16,271. This allows us to look at the proportion of people with an equivalised net administrative income below this threshold by ethnicity.
Persons identifying as White Irish Traveller were most likely to have an equivalised net administrative income below this low-income threshold (56.7%), followed by people with Arab ethnicity (36.6%), and Asian or Asian Irish – Chinese (33.9%).
Persons identifying as White Irish were least likely to have an equivalised net administrative income below 60% of the national median, at 12.8%. This was followed persons identifying as Asian or Asian Irish - Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi (12.9%) and Asian or Asian Irish - any other Asian background (15.8%).
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