Figures show increasing prosperity but also areas of hardship, writes Cliff Taylor, Economics Editor
Few of the trends in the socio-economic breakdown of the 2002 census will cause a shock. We all know that more people are at work, that young people are becoming increasingly educated and that on average the journey to work has got longer. And it is little surprise to find that the inhabitants of Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown have the highest percentage of people in the "A" social classification of owners and managers.
The value of the census is that, as a definitive statistical snapshot, it puts figures on these trends.
Also, it throws up some figures which are surprising. There will inevitably be a focus on the unemployment rate of 8.8 per cent, well above the 4.2 per cent estimated for the period in the quarterly household survey unemployment data, although the gap is largely due to the different questions used in the two surveys.
Perhaps of more value, the census puts the spotlight on 88 electoral districts defined as unemployment blackspots, which had an average unemployment rate of 24 per cent, nearly 3 times the average. Whatever the argument about the way unemployment is measured in the census, this does show clearly that the benefits of the boom did not reach a significant number of people. About 16,500 people in the electoral districts concerned define themselves as being unemployed.
Many of these blackspots are in urban areas, with Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford containing 38 of the 88 blackspots, although some of the highest percentage unemployment rates were found in rural parts of Mayo and Galway.
The figures indicate that significant areas of the State remain where large numbers of the people are outside the "normal" economy.
The survey also provides further evidence of the extraordinary economic progress of recent years, accompanied by some significant social trends. Total employment has risen by 334,000 since the 1996 census to reach 1.64 million. Interestingly, this increase also exactly matches the 323,000 rise to just over 3 million in the total population over 15 years of age over the same period.
As well as the increase in the population, the other main supply of additional workers came from increased female participation in the workforce. Female participation has risen from 28.2 per cent in 1971 to 47 per cent by last year.
Elsewhere the survey shows other evidence of a population becoming more prosperous. Higher numbers are staying on longer in education; nearly 50 per cent of the adult population in 1981 had left education before reaching 16, while by last year this figure had fallen to 24.4 per cent. The trend in car ownership has been sharply upwards and over one million households had at least one car in 2002, an increase of 330,000 compared with 1991. Meanwhile over 550,000 households - or 43.5 per cent of the total - had a personal computer, of which 436,000 had access to the Internet.
The CSO also provides some longer-term trends, notably in the housing area, where between 1926 and 2022 , the density of persons per room - a general indicator of housing conditions - fell from 1.19 to 0.53. Meanwhile the number of rented dwellings almost doubled to 141,000 between 1991 and 2002, reversing a 30-year decline. This presumably reflects increasing investment in the buy-to-let housing market, as well as the difficulty for many younger people of affording homes.
Many of the houses that are being bought are further from urban centres such as Dublin and Galway, now surrounded by commuter rings in which more than 30 per cent of people face a journey of more than 20 miles each day to work with most, the survey suggests, still taking their car.
The average journey to work is now almost 10 miles and while the average journey time is put at a relatively modest 28 minutes, there are significant numbers in the Dublin region facing much longer times in their car or on public transport.