Household disposable income increased fractionally in the first three months of this year compared with the end of 2016, official data shows.
The seasonally adjusted quarterly gross disposable income of households and non-profit organisations increased by 0.5pc, or €128m, to €24.911bn, figures from the Central Statistics Office show.
Gross savings for the total economy increased by €3.85bn – from €20.38bn in the first three months of 2016 to €24.23bn in the early months of this year.
This increase was spread across all sectors.
Financial corporations had gross savings of €1.632bn in the first quarter of the year, an increase of €947m on the same period last year.
This was primarily due to increased net investment income, the CSO said. Earlier this year the CSO released its survey on income and living conditions for 2015, which provided a more detailed breakdown on financial equality.
It is the official source of data on household and individual income and also provides a number of key national poverty indicators, such as the ‘at risk of poverty’ rate, the consistent poverty rate and rates of enforced deprivation. That data showed that the ‘at risk of poverty’ rate, which is the share of persons whose income was less than 60pc of the national median income, was 16.9pc, similar to the 2014 figure of 17.2pc.
In addition, the ‘consistent poverty rate’, which includes those persons who are defined as being both at risk of poverty and who are also experiencing enforced deprivation, was 8.7pc.
Article Source: http://tinyurl.com/kbwqb42
