CSO report: Huge inequality between best and worst paid

Amid the upbeat headline figures in the latest Measuring Ireland's Progress report are ominous indications of inequality and continuing high levels of poverty, particularly among children.

The Central Statistics Office, in its "highlights" statement accompanying the report, points jauntily to "the second highest fertility rate in the EU" at 1.96, the "lowest divorce rate" at 0.6 per 1,000 population and "highest proportion of young people" in the EU.

We also read the “at risk of poverty” rate, at 14.1 per cent in 2013, was the “seventh lowest” in the EU 28.

This “at risk of poverty” rate is below the EU average rate of 16.6 per cent, though this is achieved through a significant reliance on social transfers – ie welfare payments, funded through taxation, to bring people to a minimal, if often unacceptably low, level of income.

To be “at risk of poverty” is to live on an income below 60 per cent of the median income.

After transfers, the "at risk of poverty" rate is higher than in such states as the Czech Republic (8.6 per cent) and France (13.7 per cent).

However, if there was no social welfare system, with all citizens dependent on the wages and the support of family, the at-risk rate would be a staggering 49.8 per cent – topped only by Greece, where the rate before transfers would be 53.4 per cent.

These figures point to a huge reliance on transfers to achieve the basic incomes on which hundreds of thousands of people depend, and a huge degree of inequality in wages between those at the top and bottom of the pay scales.

That being said, the “at risk of poverty” rate has declined, from 20.9 per cent in 2004, suggesting transfers are achieving these outcomes with increasing efficiency.

Poverty rates

Consistent poverty rates increased, from 7.7 per cent in 2012 to 8 per cent in 2014.

That translates as 368,440 people in consistent poverty – ie living on an income below 60 per cent of the median and also unable to afford such basics as a second pair of strong shoes, a warm winter coat, sufficient heating to be warm at home or to have friends or family over for a meal once a month.

Of the almost 370,000 experiencing such privation are an increasing number of children. In 2014, one in eight children (11.2 per cent) were in consistent poverty.

Almost a third (32 per cent) of single-parent households were at risk of poverty, and over a fifth (22.1 per cent) were in consistent poverty in 2014.