2012 Review Detailed Individualised Budget Sheets

These tables present the components budgets detailing the fully itemised basket of goods and services for each individual type. The budgets are presented across 15 categories and contain the entire list of items for each income scenario covered by the data.

Urban

Rural

Details are provided for each item, including quantity required and expected lifespan in weeks, the unit price and weekly cost are also included. The weekly cost of each item is calculated by dividing the unit cost of the number of items required by the number of weeks it is expected to last. For example an adults winter coat is expected to last two years, therefore its unit price is divided by 104 (the number of weeks in two years) to arrive at the weekly expenditure required to enable the purchase of this item.

As part of the 2012 review process a variety of items in the basket have been re-priced in March 2012, these items are indicated in the tables with this symbol·§. This is due to the specification of certain basket items changing, for example the retailer or brand specified by the focus groups may have changed, also certain new items have been added, e.g. a Saorview set-top box. The majority of the remaining items unit costs are from 2006, however, certain items have been re-priced at later stages and these are also indicated in the tables. The weekly cost of every item is adjusted to March 2012 using the appropriate CPI detailed sub-indice rates as published by the CSO.

The Two Parent, One Parent, Pre-School, Primary School and Secondary School budgets are individualised from the aggregate household budgets established in 2006, the methodology followed for this process is discussed in the 2012 Minimum Income Standard report. In the course of the 2009 Minimum Essential Budgets for Households in Rural Areas study, the pricing of certain items common to both the Rural and Urban baskets were updated for the Urban baskets to December 2009 prices. At this point the baskets items were also organised into the new expenditure categories presented here.

The 2012 Minimum Income Standard for Ireland study added new individual types and established the de-aggregated individual budgets. The baby and nineteen year old are new individual types from this tranche of the research, and the different needs of a single female of working age were also examined so as to provide a full picture of the minimum needs of working age single adults. For the budgets for the new individual types only new items were priced, the adjusted price for items common to other individual types were taken.

Minimum Income Standard for Ireland

The detailed individual expenditure tables for the Minimum Income Standard for Ireland report remain available, below.

N.B. The aggregate expenditure baskets for each of the original six household types have been adjusted annually from 2006 to 2011 in order to ensure the expenditure data maintained its relevance and utility. These continue to be available under the Expenditure Baskets category above.