High Earners — Census affluence indicators
Small Areas ranked on Census 2022 social class, socio-economic group and education indicators. This is not measured income.
Target homes
50,000
Residential delivery addresses
Actual homes selected
50,022
22 over target (whole areas only)
Official Small Areas
407
of 17,969 scorable CSO Small Areas in scope
Counties covered
11
These are the Small Areas in Ireland where professional and managerial occupations and degree-level education are most concentrated in Census 2022. Affluence indicators correlate with higher household income at area level, but they do not establish the income of any individual household or address.
Where the audience is
Each shape is one Census Small Area in the selection, shaded by score. 407 of 407 selected Small Areas are drawn from the official published CSO Small Area boundaries.
CSO Small Areas - National Statistical Boundaries 2022 (Ungeneralised), published by Tailte Éireann under CC BY 4.0.
How the audience scores
Figures are weighted by the number of eligible homes in each selected Small Area, compared with the benchmark: All scorable Small Areas in Ireland.
Social class A/B (professional + managerial/technical)
40% of scoreDenominator is all published social class categories, including other/unknown.
Socio-economic group (employers/managers + higher and lower professional)
30% of scoreDenominator is all published socio-economic groups, including other/unknown.
Third level honours degree or higher
30% of scoreDenominator is all published education levels, including not stated.
County breakdown
| County | Small Areas | Homes | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| dublin | 340 | 41,514 | |
| kildare | 20 | 2,765 | |
| cork | 23 | 2,752 | |
| wicklow | 11 | 1,605 | |
| limerick | 4 | 491 | |
| galway | 3 | 302 | |
| kilkenny | 2 | 224 | |
| waterford | 1 | 111 | |
| louth | 1 | 110 | |
| donegal | 1 | 85 | |
| meath | 1 | 63 |
Methodology and limitations
How areas are selected
- Every Census Small Area with a usable published value for all scoring components is scored, then ranked highest first (ties broken by Small Area reference).
- Whole official Small Areas are added until the running total of eligible homes first reaches the target of 50,000. Nothing is split, capped or padded, so the actual total lands at 50,022.
- Census 2022 publishes 18,919 Small Areas. SmartPOST address data resolves to 18,877 internal address-coverage units, which map onto 17,973 distinct official CSO Small Area codes (95.0% of published Small Areas). 17 internal units carry no official Small Area code and are excluded entirely. Scoring, ranking and selection are done once per official Small Area code, and every internal unit mapped to a selected code is included, so no address is counted twice and no official area is half-selected. 17,969 official Small Areas in scope have a usable published value for every scoring component; the rest are excluded from ranking rather than counted as zero. Known limitation: the internal-unit to official-code mapping is many-to-one and is not re-derived here, so official areas whose addresses are split across internal units are selected as a whole official area.
Which addresses count
- Active Eircode address records only (retired records excluded).
- Residential building use only — business, mixed-use and unknown use excluded.
- Addresses flagged as under construction or derelict are excluded.
- Addresses recorded as vacant ARE included, because the letterbox exists.
- Only addresses that carry a Census Small Area reference can be selected.
What this report cannot tell you
- Census figures describe areas, not households or individuals. No income, wealth or euro threshold is used or implied anywhere in this report.
- Percentages shown are area averages weighted by eligible homes - they are estimates for the selection, not counts of matched people.
- Map shapes are the official published CSO Small Area boundaries. Where one is unavailable, an approximate address-coverage outline is drawn and labelled as such.
- This is an illustrative sample. Your real campaign audience is confirmed with SmartPOST before anything is booked or delivered.
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