Using income levels as a measure of poverty fails to give an accurate picture of the lives of Ireland's poor, the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) has said.
Counting the number of people receiving less than half the average income as living "in poverty" was insufficient, Dr Brian Nolan, research professor with the ESRI said.
"The relative income threshold is not a good measure of poverty on its own as it takes no account of the very real importance of living standards and the ability of people to participate in the ordinary life of Irish society," he said.
Dr Nolan was speaking at the launch of the latest ESRI report, Monitoring Poverty Trends in Ireland, yesterday.
The report shows the number of people below the relative income threshold (taken as half the average income) grew from 16-17 per cent in 1994 to 21-22 per cent in 2000.
However the actual level of deprivation, was down from 10 per cent in 1994 to 3 per cent in 2000.
Deprivation is taken as being unable to afford basic requirements of life, Dr Nolan said. "People who say they can't afford a warm overcoat in winter, can't afford new clothes instead of second-hand, or can't afford to heat their houses experience deprivation."
Dr Nolan criticised the recent UN Development Programme report which ranked Ireland as having one of the worst poverty levels in the industrialised world. He said it failed to take these quality of life measures into consideration. "This is why Ireland ranked so poorly," he said.
Dr Christopher Whelan, of the ESRI, said anti-poverty groups tended to latch on to the worst statistic, and lose sight of the bigger picture. "There is a danger that advocates for the poor and marginalised, like CORI, can grasp at a statistic. Life is a bit more complicated than that."
Both income and lifestyle measures were needed to deliver an accurate picture of poverty in Ireland, he said. "Someone who is unemployed this year but had a good income for the last 10 years will have a different standard of living to someone who has been unemployed for a long time," he added.
Dr Whelan said he agreed with the Conference of Religious in Ireland (CORI) that a long term strategy was needed to prevent the gap between rich and poor widening and he said the "basic items" used to measure consistent poverty would need to be revised in the future.
