2014-04-22 - Socio Economic Review 2014 - Full text and cover - FINAL

poverty by region and area
Recent SILC reports have provided a regional breakdown of poverty levels. The data,
presented in table A3.5 suggests an uneven national distribution of poverty. Using
2011 data, poverty levels are recorded as higher for the BMW region compared to
the South and East. Previous SILC data (not since updated) demonstrated that
within these regions Dublin had less than one in ten people living in poverty while
figures were twice this in the Mid-West, South-East and the Midlands. The table also
reports that poverty is more likely to occur in rural areas than urban areas. In 2011
the risk of poverty in rural Ireland was 4.6 per cent higher than in urban Ireland
with at risk rates of 18.8 per cent and 14.2 per cent respectively.
Table A3.5 Risk of poverty by region and area, 2005-2011
2005 2009 2010 2011
Border, Midland and West - 16.2 13.8 20.4
South and East - 13.3 15.0 14.3
Urban Areas 16.0 11.8 12.5 14.2
Rural Areas 22.5 17.8 18.1 18.8
overall population 18.5 14.1 14.7 16.0
Source: CSO (2008:15; 2013:9) using national equivalence scale.
Deprivation: food and fuel poverty
Chapter 3 outlines recent data from the SILC survey on deprivation. To accompany
this, we examine here two further areas of deprivation associated with food poverty
and fuel poverty.
Food poverty
While there is no national definition or measure of food poverty, a number of
reports over the past decade have examined it and its impact. A 2004 report entitled
Food Poverty and Policy considered food poverty as “the inability to access a
nutritionally adequate diet and the related impacts on health, culture and social
participation” (Society of St. Vincent de Paul et al, 2004). That report, and a later
study entitled Food on a Low Income (Safefood 2011), reached similar conclusions and
found that the experience of food poverty among poor people was that they: eat less
well compared to better off groups; have difficulties accessing a variety of
nutritionally balanced good quality and affordable foodstuffs; spend a greater
268 Socio-Economic Review 2014