This article is from page 16 of the 2012-09-25 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
BIGGER houses and more houses in Clare than every before, with fewer and fewer people living in them.
This is the latest picture painted by the 2011 National Census of Population returns, which was revealed in the fifth bulletin report released by the Central Statistics Office in the past week.
Figures for the county that fewer people per household than ever before.
In 2011 when the census was compiled, the average number of people per household in urban areas was 2.61, a figure that increased slightly to 2.78 in rural areas, while the over- all figure for the county stood at 2.71.
These figures reflect the continuing overall trend of fewer people living in houses – a phenomenon that is explained by the building boom during the Celtic Tiger years being at a much faster pace than the population increases in the same period.
Earlier this month it was revealed that there were over 24,000 houses constructed in the county in the last 20 years, while in the same two-decade period the population of Clare only increased by 15,000.
There was a 76 per cent increase in the number of houses in the county between 1991 and 2011, from 31,606 to 55,616, but in the same period the average size of households in the county continued to drop.
The drop in the number of people per household in the county over the last 65 years is contained in the census returns.
The average size per household was 4.14 in 1946 as compared with 2.71 today, a slide that has continued in the 12 census reports compiled in that 65 years.
By 1966 the average size of households in Clare had dropped to 3.84, while it went under 3 for the first time in 2002 census when the average was down to 2.92.
The 2011 figures also show that for the first time in 20 years the average household in bigger in rural Clare than it is in urban areas of population.