Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 26 July 2017
172. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for Finance the distribution of household wealth assets among the population; and the percentage of those assets owned by the top 1%, 5%, 10%, 20% and 50%, respectively. [36316/17]
Amharc ar fhreagraI assume the Deputy’s question refers to the distribution of household net wealth (i.e. assets less liabilities).
In 2013, the Central Statistics Office conducted the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). This survey provided for the first time comprehensive data on household wealth in Ireland. The survey provides information on the ownership and values of different types of assets and liabilities along with more general information on income, employment and household composition.
During 2016, my Department, jointly with the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), conducted a research project into the distribution of wealth in Ireland and the potential implications of a wealth tax using the HFCS. The research formed part of an ongoing joint research programme with the ESRI on the Macro-Economy and Taxation. The research paper, “Scenarios and Distributional Implications of a Household Wealth Tax in Ireland” is available on the ESRI website (https://www.esri.ie/publications/scenarios-and-distributional-implications-of-a-household-wealth-tax-in-ireland/). The paper presented results on the composition of net wealth (i.e. assets less liabilities) across both the wealth and income distributions in Ireland.
Table 2 of the Research paper details the distribution of household net wealth in 2013 across ten wealth deciles. Deciles are constructed by ranking households based on their net assets and then dividing them into ten equally sized groups.
It should be borne in mind when aggregating the percentage of net wealth held by different deciles that the bottom wealth decile in Table 2 has negative net wealth as total debts exceeded assets for these households. As a result, the richest 90% of households held 103.5% of net wealth in 2013. On this basis, in 2013 the richest ten percent of households held 53.8% of net wealth, the richest twenty percent held 72.7% of net wealth and the richest fifty percent held 98.6% of net wealth. The research paper did not examine the wealth holdings of the richest five percent or richest one percent of households.
