Making tough choices: Experiences of hygiene poverty in Ireland

Abstract

This article examines hygiene poverty as an under-recognised dimension of material deprivation in Ireland. Presenting four in-depth biographical case studies, the study explores how limited resources constrain access to essential hygiene goods across diverse household contexts. Situating hygiene within social policy debates on relative deprivation, dignity and decommodification, the article argues that hygiene poverty is not reducible to income poverty alone but operates through embodied mechanisms of stigma, respectability and social participation. The findings reveal gendered patterns of sacrifice; cumulative pressures associated with incomplete healthcare universalism and the market dependence of essential bodily goods. The article concludes by outlining structural policy reforms, including enhanced measurement, income adequacy review and movement toward universal basic provision of hygiene essentials.

Introduction

Hygiene poverty is an understudied phenomenon in the social sciences despite the fact that good personal hygiene and the ability to maintain a clean household environment are both key to overall well-being and are arguably aspects of core human rights. While hygiene is often treated as a matter of personal responsibility or consumer choice, sociological and social policy scholarship suggests it is deeply embedded in systems of moral regulation and welfare provisioning. Douglas (1966) demonstrated that practices of cleanliness are central to social order, distinguishing purity from pollution. Goffman's (1963) work on stigma further illustrates how bodily presentation becomes tied to moral worth and social legitimacy. More recent scholarship on respectability and class (Skeggs, 1997; Tyler, 2013) shows how women and working-class subjects are disproportionately required to demonstrate value through bodily discipline and domestic order. Hygiene, therefore, is not simply another household expense; it is a socially regulated practice linked to dignity, belonging and social citizenship. In social policy terms, the ability to maintain bodily and domestic standards intersects with debates about minimum living standards, adequacy of income supports and the decommodification of essential goods (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999).

For our study, we defined hygiene poverty as the inability to afford a diverse range of everyday basic essential hygiene items which are necessary for health and wellbeing across the life course and include items such as deodorant, shampoo, shaving gel, toothpaste, nappies, period products and detergents (Whelan and Greene, 2025). This definition aligns with broader social policy understandings of deprivation as the enforced lack of socially perceived necessities (Mack and Lansley, 1985; Townsend, 1979). Hygiene items, while often excluded from headline poverty measures, meet Townsend's criteria of goods required to participate adequately in society. Their absence, therefore, represents not discretionary consumption but constrained social participation.

A UK study documented different aspects of hygiene poverty and showed that hygiene poverty affects an estimated 3,150,000 adults in the UK (6% of the population). This baseline rises significantly for certain groups such as people with a disability or long-term health condition, those from lower-income households, younger people and those from ethnic minority backgrounds (Gunstone et al., 2022). This suggests that experiences of hygiene poverty in the UK cuts across income groups. A relatively similar welfare system and political economy to that of the UK persists in Ireland, yet similar, fine-grained research has thus far remained absent and access to good hygiene as an aspect of deprivation is not measured in key statistical programmes such as the Survey on Income and Living Conditions [SILC] (CSO, 2023). With this narrow research landscape as a backdrop, this article documents part of the outcome of what represents the first comprehensive study into hygiene poverty. The overall study sought to understand the factors that lead to hygiene poverty, explore the impact of hygiene poverty and share research findings on hygiene poverty to increase awareness and to influence the wider conversation on poverty (see Whelan and Greene, 2025, 2023).

Prevalence of hygiene poverty

While discrete dimensions of poverty are difficult to disentangle, understanding the different aspects and interconnectedness of poverty facilitates an understanding of how people are forced to make difficult choices between food, fuel and other essential items and how this is heightened for certain groups, such as women and those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Much of the empirical evidence regarding hygiene poverty is bundled up with other discrete forms of poverty. However, there is an indication of the levels of hygiene poverty that are being experienced. A 2017 report in Scotland found that over 50% of people accessing food banks were unable to afford toiletries (The Trussell Trust, 2017a, 2017b). UK research in 2023 reveals that the prevalence of hygiene poverty has tripled to 9 million in one year, representing 17% of UK adults and is experienced by a diverse range of households (In Kind Direct, 2023; Mahase, 2023). This builds upon previous UK research investigating which groups are more likely to experience this issue, and which found that households with children were more likely to experience hygiene poverty (8%), rising to 13% among those with three or more children in the household. Notably, while non-working groups were more likely to have experienced difficulty, 5% of working adults in the UK also reported having experienced hygiene poverty (Gunstone et al., 2022).

In Ireland, and with the exception of our own intervention (Whelan and Greene, 2023, 2025), research to date has focused mostly on fuel and food insecurity, demonstrating that as household bills increase, people face tough decisions about whether to put food on the table or heat their home (Amárach Research, 2022; Barrett et al., 2022). A 2022 online survey found 37% of respondents have cut back on heating and electricity, and 17% reduced spending on other essentials such as food (SVP, 2022). Research by Barnardos, an Irish Children's charity, and Aldi Ireland shows that 43% of households have cut down on spending in one or more areas in order to afford food (Amárach Research, 2022). This has led many households to seek supports and was the subject of a 2023 EAPN report investigating the growing reliance on community organisations and charities for supports. As experiences of poverty become increasingly complex, many are now reliant on the Community and Voluntary sector, causing significant stress on individuals and further strain on under-resourced organisations (O’Connor and Singleton, 2023).

Research commissioned by the Irish Refugee Council (Cid, 2023) examined the needs of the people living in Ireland's International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS). Approximately 23,000 people reside in the IPAS system, which is designed to provide accommodation to those seeking International Protection. Families living in the IPAS system are provided with a Daily Expenses Allowance (DEA) that pays €38.80 for adults and €29.80 for a child each week (Department of Social Protection, 2025). The research by Cid (2023) shows that access to personal hygiene items emerges as an area of considerable concern, particularly with respect to the needs of children.

Mirroring work done in the UK (Briggs, 2021), one aspect of hygiene poverty that has been the focus of attention in Irish policy documents relates to menstrual hygiene. The 2021 discussion paper on period poverty states that inadequate access to menstrual hygiene has the adverse consequence of recurrent exclusion from activities of daily life (Government of Ireland, 2021). The paper recognises that modules on period poverty are not included in representative population surveys, with the consequence that data on the issue is very limited. However, it suggests that between 53,000 and 85,000 women and girls in Ireland are at risk of period poverty. The paper also highlights the role that charities and NGOs play in tackling this issue and acknowledges that there is a significant increase in the incidence of period poverty, particularly amongst those experiencing homelessness or addiction, minority communities and those living in abusive relationships. However, while this is an important part of the overall picture, broader experiences of hygiene poverty continue to remain underexplored. The relative absence of hygiene-specific indicators within Irish poverty metrics reflects a broader measurement bias toward income-based indicators.

Impact of hygiene poverty

The inability to afford basic hygiene essentials and its impact on people in Ireland is currently not sufficiently documented. However, there are indicative insights which can be gleaned from the international literature. The 2022 UK report (Gunstone et al., 2022) found that hygiene poverty has significant negative impacts on mental and physical health. A total of 61% of people struggling to afford hygiene essentials said there were negative impacts on their mental health with high levels of anxiety, depression, shame and stigma. As a result, they avoided seeing family or friends and felt lonely and isolated. One-third of the survey respondents reported that their physical health was negatively impacted. These negative impacts on physical and mental health created multiple barriers to participation in employment and education, contributing to respondents avoiding work and school as their confidence and self-esteem were impacted (Gunstone et al., 2022). While of a smaller scale overall, our findings in the Irish context (Whelan and Greene, 2025, 2023) thematically mirror much of what was found in the work of Gunstone et al. (2022) on behalf of the Hygiene Bank UK.

The pressure of meeting the costs of hygiene essentials in the context of stretched budgets puts considerable stress and anxiety on households, which can impact negatively overall wellbeing and lead to growing health inequalities. For example, women and girls who lack the necessary resources to manage their menstrual hygiene reported negative impacts on their health, bringing distress, embarrassment and shame (Briggs, 2021; Boyers et al., 2022). Empirically linking period poverty to mental health, a study from the USA found that women experiencing period poverty were more likely to report moderate or severe depression than those who did not (Cardoso et al., 2021). From a social policy perspective, these findings illustrate how inadequacies in income supports translate into embodied inequalities. Marmot's (2010) work on health inequalities underscores how material deprivation becomes biologically and psychologically embedded. Hygiene poverty operates as one mechanism through which wider structural inequalities are reproduced at the level of the body. International research has explored how social and economic deprivation has the potential to widen health inequalities. Common dental diseases were found to be correlated with financial circumstances as hygiene poverty limits the ability to afford basic products essential to maintain oral hygiene or attend for regular dental care (Cope and Chestnutt, 2023) resulting in poorer dental health outcomes. The impact of difficulty affording basic hygiene essentials affects everyone across the life course and is recognised by the Irish government as exacerbated by low incomes, homelessness, living in abusive relationships and among minority ethnic communities (Government of Ireland, 2021).

Study methods

Biographical narrative methods are particularly suited to examining poverty-related deprivation because they illuminate how structural constraints unfold across the life course (Chamberlayne et al., 2000; Wengraf, 2001). The aim was analytic depth rather than representativeness, consistent with case-oriented social policy research (Small, 2009).

Study design

This article draws on qualitative data collected as part of a broader mixed-methods study examining hygiene poverty in Ireland (Whelan and Greene, 2023, 2025). The wider project combined survey data with in-depth qualitative interviews in order to capture both prevalence and lived experience. The present article focuses on four biographical case studies to provide detailed insight into how hygiene poverty is experienced and managed within households. A qualitative case-oriented design was adopted to facilitate analytic depth rather than statistical generalisation. Case-based approaches are particularly appropriate for examining under-researched forms of deprivation, as they allow exploration of cumulative pressures, trade-offs and household decision-making processes that are often obscured in survey data (Small, 2009).

Sampling and recruitment

Participants were recruited through leafleting and through direct contact with Family Resources Centres. A purposive sampling strategy was employed to capture variation across gender, employment status, caregiving responsibilities and household composition (Patton, 2002). Eligibility criteria included self-reported difficulty affording basic hygiene items within the previous 12 months. The four cases presented in this article were selected using a maximum-variation logic. They represent diverse socioeconomic and household contexts, including lone parenthood, dual-earner, unemployment and caring for a child with additional needs. The aim was not representativeness, but to illuminate how hygiene poverty manifests across differing social locations.

Data collection

Each interview lasted between 40 (shortest) and 120 (longest) minutes and was conducted in person. Interviews were audio-recorded with consent and transcribed verbatim. A biographical-narrative approach was used (Wengraf, 2001), encouraging participants to situate hygiene-related challenges within broader life trajectories. Rather than focusing narrowly on product access, interviews explored:

Household budgeting practices

Experiences of trade-offs and prioritisation

Health-related costs

Emotional and social consequences

Interactions with state supports

This approach enabled examination of hygiene deprivation as embedded within everyday life rather than as a discrete incident.

Data analysis

Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006, 2019). Analysis proceeded in several stages:

Familiarisation through repeated reading of transcripts.

Initial coding of material constraints, budgeting strategies and product-specific deprivation.

Development of broader themes relating to stigma, gendered responsibility, hierarchy of needs and market dependence.

Iterative refinement of themes across cases.

The case-study presentation adopted in the findings section preserves narrative coherence while enabling cross-case comparison. As Small (2009) argues, case-based research contributes through analytic generalisation, clarifying mechanisms and processes, rather than statistical inference. Although findings are presented as extended case narratives, the analysis focused on identifying shared structural mechanisms across cases, particularly in relation to stigma, respectability, gendered responsibility, and market dependence in the provision of essential hygiene goods.

Ethical considerations

Ethical approval was granted by the School of Social Work and Social Policy, Research Ethics Committee at Trinity College Dublin. Given the sensitivity of discussing hygiene practices, which are often experienced as private and potentially stigmatising, particular attention was paid to informed consent, confidentiality and participant wellbeing. Pseudonyms are used throughout. Participants were informed of their right to withdraw at any time and were provided with information on relevant support services where appropriate.

Reflexivity

The researchers were mindful that discussions of hygiene, poverty and parenting can evoke shame or vulnerability. Reflexive fieldnotes were maintained following interviews to document the researcher's assumptions and emotional responses. This reflexive process informed analysis, particularly in interpreting expressions of embarrassment and self-blame.

Findings: Case study interviews

An interview with Grace

Grace is a mother of two children, one of whom is of school-going age and one aged under 5. Grace's age is bracketed in the 25–35 range. She is single, unemployed and receives a social welfare payment. Grace receives no other formal support. Grace lives in an area of Dublin city that would be considered severely disadvantaged in terms of socioeconomic deprivation. ¹ Grace suffers from polycystic ovary syndrome ² (PCOS), and this is of particular relevance to her experience of hygiene poverty, as Grace experiences irregular and prolonged menstrual periods, sometimes resulting in intense personal hygiene needs. With respect to tenure status, Grace lives in socially provided rented accommodation (Table 1).

Table 1.

Participant profiles.

Name	Grace	Fiona	Ryan	Jane
Age	25–35	35–45	25–35	35–45
No. of children under 18	Two	Three	One	Three
Civil status	Single	Married	Has a partner	Married
Employment status	Unemployed	Homemaker	Unemployed	Homemaker
Receiving a welfare payment	Yes. One Parent Family Payment	Yes. Carer's Allowance and Domiciliary Care Allowance	Yes. Jobseeker's Allowance	No
Tenure status	Socially provided rented accommodation	Privately rented accommodation	Socially provided rented accommodation	Homeowner
Additional, relevant, biographical details	Grace lives in a severely disadvantaged area of Dublin city. Grace suffers from polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)	Fiona lives in a large town in the Leinster region and two of her children have special needs	Ryan lives in a severely disadvantaged area of Dublin city	Jane lives in a large town in the Leinster region. Her husband works fulltime and this the primary strand of income in the household

Experiences of hygiene poverty for Grace

In the first instance, Grace was keenly aware that the level of her social welfare payment was often insufficient in terms of allowing her to meet her and her children's overall needs. In this respect, Grace spoke about experiencing pinch points in the year, such as Christmas and Easter and ongoing costs like school expenses. She also spoke about being very conscious of costs in general and of tailoring her behaviour because of this, for example, drip drying as opposed to blow drying her hair to save on electricity. However, what is most striking in Grace's testimony is a set of deeply personal circumstances which have led to her experiencing hygiene poverty as a feature of her general experience of poverty. Moreover, Grace does not locate these experiences in a discrete cost of living crisis, rather her experiences of poverty and of hygiene-related poverty are and have been an ongoing gendered aspect of her life experience generally. In the first instance, Grace talks about difficult personal circumstances leading to separation from her partner and about struggling through parenting her two children alone without any formal material or financial support aside from what she receives via state welfare. Grace also spoke about how struggling to cope affected her mental health and her view of herself generally and as a mother. Experiences of depression have led Grace in the past to make decisions affecting personal hygiene:

…so your mental health then, so then you kind of, it's nearly kind of like, do you know people that have depression or something, you’re like ‘Oh I don’t need this extra shower today because I have to pay two euro on the electric and I’ve the shower gel and then I’ve to dry my hair…

Grace speaks about making difficult choices and suggests that people experiencing depression are perhaps more inclined to let aspects of personal hygiene go, suggesting that good mental health can be needed to maintain good personal hygiene. The cycle, as described by Grace, suggests that struggling to survive on limited resources can lead to poorer mental health, which in turn can lead to poor personal hygiene practices, which further exacerbate mental health, which can have numerous and far-reaching implications.

Grace also spoke about how she has felt she would be perceived by others, and this also led directly to experiences of exacerbated hardship and of hygiene poverty by preventing her from looking for help:

I’m doing everything wrong. Oh my God I can’t keep up with my bills. Oh my electric is gone now again. I’ve no food. I’m not going in there to tell another mother I can’t feed my kids, I can’t buy pads, I can’t do this. It's embarrassing.

Grace talks about the struggle of laying herself bare and potentially submitting to the judgment of another or others as part of what is needed in order to seek help. She describes what it potentially feels like to ask for help when things are difficult and what this, in effect, means admitting to ‘I’m doing everything wrong’. For Grace, this has meant not asking for help even in instances where she has badly needed it. Moreover, this has meant that though help and resources have been available, Grace has often left these unclaimed either because of a fear of judgment or because she has felt undeserving of the help.

While these indirect routes formed a key component of the factors that led Grace to experience hygiene poverty, there were also direct factors. For Grace, this effectively came down to making choices about what to spend her limited income on and, reflective of the limited literature on the topic, hygiene and the ability to maintain a clean environment were often placed at the bottom of an inverted hierarchy of needs. Grace describes how personal hygiene items, things like deodorant and moisturiser, took on the status of luxuries and were the first things to go when things got difficult. Yet, there are aspects of Grace's experience where her personal needs could not easily be dispensed with, as her health condition can have unpredictable consequences for her:

So, I have PCOS … So it means that you’ve irregular periods. So I could bleed for six weeks … So it costs – it probably costs me more than someone that doesn’t have PCOS, that's buying one packet [of pads] a month to four five or six or seven, depending on if I have ruptured cysts…

Having PCOS has a had very real and material effect for Grace. The unpredictable nature of the syndrome can sometimes lead to higher levels of personal hygiene requirements, and these come at a considerable cost due to purchasing additional hygiene products and detergents. The consequences of having PCOS mean increased personal hygiene needs that she cannot simply turn off or place at the bottom of a hierarchy; these are needs that have to be met and that are vital to her functioning and wellbeing. Ultimately, because of her limited resources, this has forced Grace to make frustrating choices that impact on other areas of her life, such as buying makeup. The combination of limited resources and the expense of managing PCOS means that Grace has to make cuts in other areas, and this often means denying herself items that she would like to have access to but cannot ultimately afford.

The impacts of experiencing hygiene poverty for Grace effectively mirror the factors that have led to these experiences and devolve, in the main, on being extremely conscious of cost and making difficult decisions about what to spend her limited resources on. This has resulted in a very precarious, day-to-day existence for Grace, who says ‘I feel like I’m on kind of rations. But that's how I manage’. This clearly speaks to Grace's broader experience of poverty and hardship while also impacting directly on hygiene-related needs. Grace's account illustrates what Skeggs (1997) describes as the moral burden of respectability, wherein women internalise responsibility for household order and bodily presentation. Her reluctance to seek help reflects the stigma attached to failing to meet these socially prescribed standards (Goffman, 1963).

An interview with Fiona

Fiona is a mother of three children, all of whom are aged under 18. Fiona's age is bracketed in the 35–45 range. She is married and describes herself as a homemaker. Her husband works two jobs, and this is responsible for the larger share in household income. Two of Fiona's children are neurodivergent and have special needs, and this is relevant in the context of hygiene poverty because of the children's requirements and the expense associated with these. Fiona receives Carer's Allowance and Domiciliary Care Allowance with respect to two of her children. Fiona lives in a townland in the Leinster region. With respect to tenure status, Fiona lives in privately provided rented accommodation.

Experiences of hygiene poverty for Fiona

There are areas in which the factors leading to hygiene poverty for Fiona echo those mentioned by Grace in the previous case study. For example, Fiona mentions pinch points in the year, such as birthdays and Christmas and also talks about the inadequacy of the welfare payments she receives. However, there are also key biographical differences, and these are reflected in Fiona's experiences. Fiona does receive a form of welfare payment, which functions to allow her to care for her children with special needs. However, this is not her household's only strand of income, and she has indicated that her husband works two jobs. The state assistance that Fiona receives is something that she therefore describes as a ‘great help’ as opposed to something she is fully reliant on. Fiona lives in a townland location and not in an area that would be considered disadvantaged. Ostensibly, Fiona appears to be materially better off than someone with a profile like that of Grace yet recent economic conditions have meant that for Fiona and her family, the increase in the cost of living has had a real and biting effect and, just like Grace, personal hygiene and household cleaning items have often ended up at the bottom of a hierarchy of need in favour of other necessaries. For Fiona, this increased level of hardship has come most notably in the last year. Increases in the cost of living have effectively wiped out much of her family's disposable income. This in turn has had a knock-on effect for her day-to-day lived reality. Much like Grace, changes in what she can and can’t potentially afford have caused Fiona to become much more price-conscious and thrifty and has even led her to change her approach to household cleaning products:

Yeah, cleaning products and that like … I stopped buying a lot of them – went back to baking soda and vinegar for as much of it as I could because they've just gone ridiculously expensive as well and like I said then as well, going to four different supermarkets to try and get the best deals…

Fiona has moved away from purchasing household cleaning products in favour of home-made alternatives, and this foreshadows the testimony of Ryan. What is also clear is that Fiona has to do this because of the expense and potential unaffordability of household cleaning products. She also talks about shopping around to get the best deals. This conjures the same sense of precarity that was evident in Grace's testimony, though perhaps not as sharply pronounced. While the cost-of-living crisis and the general cost of household and personal hygiene items were certainly factors in Fiona's experiences of hygiene poverty, the most striking component of her testimony was undoubtedly in relation to the costs associated with her two special needs children. In setting out the context for the challenges that Fiona's family can face she shared the following:

I have two kids on the spectrum. They have different needs. My oldest … has dyspraxia and hypermobility as well so he needs leg braces and stuff. So they, with their different things and their speech and language therapy, there is a lot of different things that they have to come before, food and that as well, you know, so they can survive in this world and understand this world – the neurotypical world – do you know that kind of way?

Fiona lays out in stark detail the challenges that parents with neurodivergent, and special needs children can face. With respect to the material effects that this can have she goes so far as to say that the various services her two special needs children require, services to help them survive in and understand the world, come even before food. This offers an insight into the often-hidden sacrifices that families such as Fiona's have to make. Yet there are perhaps even more deeply hidden and, therefore, difficult to surface sacrifices, and these connect to essential personal hygiene needs. For example, one of Fiona's special needs children suffers from severe eczema and requires a specific, expensive body cream that eases itching. She explains being ‘locked in’ to purchasing particular brands of hygiene products regardless of the expense associated with the brand. Given that she has to do this continually and with limited disposable income, this illustrates a real challenge in the context of hygiene-related needs.

Fiona also specifically denoted an awareness of the increasing prices of hygiene items, focusing in particular on branded toothpaste. In some respects, focusing on a particular brand may seem overly fussy, but when one considers the very specific needs of two of Fiona's children, both of whom have intense sensory issues, focusing on a specific brand may be entirely necessary in Fiona's case. Like Grace, one of the main ways in which Fiona was affected in the context of hygiene-related needs was through the difficult choices she was continually faced with. These could be choices through which the whole household was affected, or they could be deeply personal. In the following excerpt, Fiona illustrates the day-to-day challenges that can come when finances are stretched, and disposable income is limited:

Yeah, a lot of it is ‘Shit, when's the next bill coming in? Have I enough to cover it?’, you know, ‘This person needs shoes, I need to – I can’t do them for another month, what am I going to do?’ Do you know that kind of way? Going to charity stores, which is fine but it's, then he's allergic to everything. I don't know what way they’ve washed it, I’ll have to rewash it. That's just more time and energy, do you know that kind of way?

Here, Fiona not only describes the real financial pressures that can characterise her day-to-day life and the decisions that have to be made as a result. She also illustrates just how stressful managing in this way can be. This again conjures a sense of precarity that comes with day-to-day or week-to-week living. Yet for Fiona, there were impacts in the context of choices and expenses that were very personal to her, and these are directly connected to aspects of her womanhood and to personal hygiene needs. Fiona notes the expense of period products and even talks about a potential workaround in the form of a menstrual cup before noting that with three children and a busy lifestyle, this wouldn’t be practical. However, this area of her life has not just been something she has worried about and stressed over in the abstract; it has had a real and tangible effect beyond this:

So it's kind of, yeah, sanitary products were a big like ‘Oh my God what – ’. I would be slightly embarrassed to say that I probably left them on longer than I should have for not being able to afford to get another packet and hoping to God that my period stopped so I didn't have to buy another packet because the kids needed something or we needed oil or we needed something else…

This raw and powerful testimony from Fiona illustrates in very stark terms just what making decisions in the context of hygiene-related needs can mean as she attempts to will her body to comply, to stop the natural process of menstruation so that she is not put in a position of needing to purchase more sanitary pads, which could effectively mean needing to forgo something else. Fiona's experiences further demonstrate how social reproduction costs are privatised within households. As Fraser (2016) argues, contemporary welfare states increasingly displace the costs of care onto families, intensifying gendered burdens.

An interview with Ryan

Ryan is a father of one child aged under 18 and who has just started primary school. Ryan's age is bracketed in the 25–35 range. Ryan has a partner, is unemployed and receives a Jobseekers Allowance payment. He receives no other formal support, although he does frequently attend a Family Resource Centre where he receives some additional in-kind support, including support with hygiene items and where he also engages in upskilling programmes. Ryan lives in an area of Dublin city that would be considered severely disadvantaged in terms of socioeconomic deprivation. Ryan has a keen interest in ‘making or growing your own’ in the rounded sense, and this includes making his own household cleaning products. With respect to tenure status, Ryan lives in socially provided rented accommodation.

Experiences of hygiene poverty for Ryan

For Ryan, the factors leading to experiences of hygiene poverty and to poverty in general are something to which he has given a lot of thought. Ryan was therefore able to offer both concrete personal examples alongside much more political and economic ones. In the case of the latter, these types of explanations by Ryan were based much more on his instincts – on what he felt and feels is happening – and are strongly linked to Ryan's sense of social injustice. In this respect, Ryan has strong views and feels that injustices are being perpetrated on the part of the government and big businesses to make a profit rather than making a better life for communities, and he links this strongly to hygiene poverty. Ryan's observations are couched in his lived reality, which is characterised by struggle and deprivation. His thoughts on the surface may seem disorganised, yet, in the end, he is talking about the distribution of resources. In a society where a small percentage of people own the vast bulk of wealth and resources, Ryan's instinct that something isn’t quite right and that someone somewhere is benefiting from the unequal distribution of wealth and resources amounts to a fairly accurate summation of the current political economy. Ryan is also keenly aware of the fact that the producers and sellers of hygiene products are not social enterprises involved in the distribution of goods as an act of beneficence; they are interested, ultimately, in profit. They know people need these products and know the people are going to have to buy them regardless of the cost. Ryan makes the salient point that hygiene products are not optional extras, that they are essential, and that people need access to hygiene-related goods on a daily basis. In this way, Ryan evokes the idea of hygiene rights as a basic component of human rights and, therefore, perhaps not something that should be purely at the mercy of the market. These political, social and economic insights from Ryan are all the more salient for being made in the context of his own considerable lived experiences, which have been characterised by intense hardship and deprivation. By drilling down into Ryan's everyday life, it quickly becomes apparent that there are also deeply personal factors connected to Ryan's experiences of hygiene poverty. Below, for example, Ryan talks about the cost of essential items, the reality of toilet training a young child and the inadequacy of his social welfare payment:

A four roll pack of toilet roll is like two-fifty … and a four-year-old son, which is toilet training at the moment as well, it's absolutely hectic, hectic because he's just pissing his pants all of the time, pooing all over the place, so you’re just going through the toilet roll like there's no tomorrow and you just constantly forget like how much toilet roll is, so like when you’re only on a certain amount, like two-hundred euros a week … obviously the food comes first before – the essentials – but the health essentials come after, but you have to make sure the food is there first.

Like Fiona and Grace before him, Ryan's testimony evokes a sense of precarity and day-to-day living in which tough decisions are made, and resources are limited. At this particular point in Ryan's life, toilet roll is a considerable and virtually unavoidable expense. Toilet roll in general is clearly an essential household hygiene product, a health essential as Ryan describes it, yet for Ryan, who must try to make do on limited resources, toilet roll vies with food in a by now familiar hierarchy of need.

Like the previous interview respondents, Ryan identifies a hierarchy of need as things like rent and heat vie for position with other essential expenses. Moreover, Ryan identifies expensive pinch points in the year, such as getting a child ready for school and notes how these exacerbate already difficult circumstances. From this testimony, it can be seen that alongside Ryan's views about how the distribution of resources in society leads to hygiene poverty, there are deeply personal and difficult experiences. Just as Ryan thought a lot about the factors leading to hygiene poverty, he gave considerable thought to the impact that hygiene poverty can have. In Ryan's case, the impacts, on a personal level, were sizable.

In the first instance, there have been some impacts of hygiene deprivation which, for Ryan, may be describable as positive even if the circumstances leading to them have not been. Ryan is a keen do it yourself/make your own enthusiast, and due to the expense of household cleaning products, this interest has extended to making his own versions of these. Influenced by what he sees as the poor quality of household cleaning products, along with their expense and also influenced by what he sees as the health benefits of using homemade cleaning products, Ryan has become a self-taught producer and user of the same. However, while household cleaning products may be something that Ryan can and does produce at home, personal hygiene items and essentials are not as easily replicated, and so much of the impact of hygiene poverty for Ryan has fallen into this domain and is characterised by stress, hardship and deprivation, which he says ‘never really stops … it's a never actually ending circle of poverty’. What perhaps comes across most strongly is the grinding nature of trying to manage with extremely limited resources. There appears to be no reprieve or let up, as soon as once cost is met another presents itself. The stress of living continuously in these circumstances is palpable and, just as with Grace and Fiona, this affects Ryan's capacity to hope for something better:

Yeah you never get a break. You don’t ever get a break from the poverty like. So it kind of is hard but I don’t think it will actually ever change…

Furthermore, for Ryan, the stress of living in difficult circumstances and with limited resources is underpinned both by making difficult choices between essentials and by attempts to be thrifty in order stretch resources as much as possible. Ryan talks about choosing between gas and washing up liquid, between toilet paper and toothpaste, each of which are clearly essential, with some needing to be placed lower on a hierarchy of need simply because available resources won’t cover everything. This need to acutely manage limited resources has made Ryan, like others, think deeply about how and what he buys, speaking to a lived reality characterised by thrift, precarity and an underlying consciousness of needing to make the most of resources at all times. Living in this way, in general, has clearly been incredibly stressful for Ryan and has taken its toll on him. What he describes is managing a household day-to-day on a limited income. Yet there is a deeper layer of impact apparent in Ryan's testimony, a deeply personal layer which connects directly to hygiene-related needs:

Yeah and then at the end of it you're kind of – people are looking at you at the end, they like ‘Ah here have a bit of spare Lynx and all there’ and then you’re like ‘Bollox. After all this, I’m after forgetting to do me’…‘All this work and then I’m after forgetting to take care of meself’ and then I’m the one walking around like an absolutely disgrace because I‘m trying to take care of the family like, do you know what I mean?

At this point in the interview, Ryan was visibly upset and needed to take a break. His testimony here is a powerful illustration of the toll that poverty and hygiene-related deprivation within this, can take. Ryan's reflections foreground the commodification of necessity. Hygiene products are market goods rather than publicly guaranteed provisions. In welfare state terms, this reflects limited decommodification, whereby access to basic goods remains contingent on market participation (Esping-Andersen, 1990).

An interview with Jane

Jane is a mother of three children, all of whom are aged under 18. Jane's age is bracketed in the 35–45 range. She is married and describes herself as a homemaker. Her husband works fulltime, and this is her family's primary strand of income. Jane does not receive a welfare or benefit payment. Jane lives in a large town in the Leinster region. One of Jane's children, a daughter, has complex special needs and requires a high level of care and attention in the area of personal hygiene. Moreover, her special needs daughter can only use very specific personal hygiene items, which affects the resources available to the rest of the family. With respect to tenure status, Jane is a homeowner.

Experiences of hygiene poverty for Jane

The factors leading to hygiene poverty for Jane are not dissimilar to the factors leading to hygiene poverty for Grace, Fiona and Ryan and Jane's experiences of hygiene-related deprivation also share many similar textures. Jane has been profoundly affected by the rising cost of goods and services that characterise the increase in the cost of living seen over the previous eighteen months or so, leading up to the interview. Grinding and long-term poverty has not been a continuous backdrop for Jane as it has for Grace and Ryan, and she does not live in a socioeconomically deprived area. Yet, Jane has nevertheless experienced many of the same things as she struggles to make choices between essentials, is intensely conscious of price and is forced to live an often day-to-day, precarious existence. What is perhaps unique in Jane's case is that although she has considerable caring responsibilities with respect to her special needs daughter, her household income is such that she doesn’t receive any state support. This means that her testimony effectively illustrates how households with nominally high income can experience significant material, social and psychological hardship as they experience the full force of the rising costs of goods and services. As with other interview participants, this had led directly to experiences of hygiene-related deprivation through the creation of a hierarchy of need within the household:

If it had just been hygiene products that would increase, you know, you'd figure it out … but it just feels like everything is so much more expensive and hygiene products kind of feel like the lesser of the things. Like they need to eat more than they need a new toothbrush. I need to be able to have diesel in the car so I can get to the hospital more than we need a nice shower gel or sanitary products.

Jane is clear here, the rising costs of hygiene products alone is not the problem, rather it is rising costs of household goods and services overall that have coalesced to make things difficult. For Jane, this has created a by now familiar hierarchy of need as food and fuel come before hygiene products like new toothbrushes, which are characterised as ‘lesser’ in terms of overall needs. While the general cost of living has clearly had an impact for Jane, there are also several personal or discrete factors within her household which have also led to experiences of hygiene poverty. For example, Jane's testimony shows that hygiene poverty within a household is not necessarily evenly dispersed:

So you, definitely as a parent, go without … we always will put our children first, but it does sometimes suck and there's days I get really angry that I don't have a basic moisturiser … I have a boy that's in puberty, so he needs deodorant now and you know, he needs the shower gel and he's very aware of ‘does he smell nice?’ and there's a lot of pressure to make sure you're buying the things that his friends have, which is really difficult … Like myself and my husband would share a deodorant … it's always choices and going without.

This telling excerpt from Jane's interview offers a number of important insights into the factors that can lead to hygiene poverty. In the first instance, we can see that hygiene poverty is not always evenly dispersed within Jane's household, meaning that it is possible for one or more people in the household to experience having unmet hygiene needs or having their hygiene needs met in a less-than-satisfactory way, while others in the same household fare better. For example, Jane is conscious of her pubescent son, who, in turn, is conscious of the social textures of good hygiene, and so she strives to make sure he has the shower gel and deodorant he needs. Conversely, she and her husband share a deodorant in order to reduce outgoings. Moreover, Jane describes going without a fresh razor or decent moisturiser in order to put children first and make sure they have everything they need. Personal hygiene products ultimately take on the status of luxuries and are placed on the Christmas wish list. Having evoked Christmas, Jane also identifies pinch points in the calendar year as needing to be carefully managed, particularly when it comes to the expectations of children.

This carefully planned, intensely budget-conscious way of living characterised much of Jane's daily life as she spoke about weighing up the costs of travelling to purchase cheaper goods from discount retailers versus the price of the fuel it would take to get there. Perhaps the biggest budgetary strain for Jane, however, and one with clear implications in the context of essential hygiene needs, are the costs associated with caring for her special needs daughter, costs for which she receives no formal state support:

…I have a daughter with additional needs, and she needs continence pads and things like that and they're not funded … I've had to use puppy pads, I've had to use potty training pads for her in the bed and these things really, like they affect her massively. She's already hugely embarrassed by the fact that she uses a catheter and yet I feel like I'm failing her by not giving her equipment that she needs and has a right to have. It's been really difficult.

This testimony from Jane, in which she describes her daughter's needs is devastating and powerful in equal measure and speaks to the impact of striving to meet the hygiene and bodily related needs of a child with very specific requirements in the face of limited resources and no additional help. Jane describes making compromises by having to use alternatives for her daughter, who needs incontinence pads. Moreover, she talks about the impact that this has on her daughter. While it is clear that, on the surface, stretched resources is the factor leading to the experience of a difficulty in meeting the hygiene needs of her daughter, Jane also alludes to rights and to what it means when the rights of someone to have their bodily and hygiene needs met are left unfulfilled. In this way, Jane tacitly suggests that access to the things needed to meet basic bodily and hygiene needs are indeed rights and should be thought of as such. Accessing these rights, though, has not been easy for Jane, and she characterises this as a weary fight for basic needs for her children, something she feels she shouldn’t have to fight to access. Yet, Jane has had to fight and doing so has clearly left her worn out and worn down at times.

For Jane, mirroring the testimony of each of the other case study participants, the impacts of experiencing hygiene poverty were multifaceted. In the first instance, there is that by now familiar mix of stretching to make things last, coupled with personal hygiene and household cleaning products being placed on the bottom of a hierarchy of need. In the following excerpt, we see instances of both:

You're always watching, you know, you get paid on a Thursday morning and by Monday you’re thinking ‘Right, have we enough milk? Is there enough toothpaste left?’, you know, bringing washing-up liquid up to wash your hands in the sink upstairs because you've ran out of soap. Little things like that are huge … versus the more severe things of reusing sanitary products because you are that stuck, or using products that are irritating you because they're cheaper.

Here, Jane talks about carefully monitoring supplies. She also talks about workarounds, such as using washing-up liquid to wash hands. Jane characterises the latter as a ‘little thing’, yet it is still an example of personal hygiene needs being diminished due to a lack of resources. To use Jane's own words, there are more severe examples in what she describes, also as she talks about reusing period products or using cheap hygiene products, which can irritate and are less than ideal. Jane also worried about what the effects of having to be spendthrift in this way might be on her children as she tries to manage their expectations in terms of what the household can realistically afford. Jane recalls an exchange with her son, who is increasingly aware of the social currency of good hygiene and also conscious of having access to specific brands, and this also has a distinct social texture as he sees what friends have access to and wishes for the same. Jane struggles with achieving the balance she would like in these exchanges in the context of limited resources; she needs her son to understand that though he’ll always have what he needs, it won’t always be possible to get him exactly what he wants while also not worrying him too much about the family's finances. As the arbitrator of what's possible, these are tough decisions for Jane and ones she feels she alone is forced to take. Playing the role of tough decision maker can lead to Jane feeling isolated and creates a tension in her relationship with her husband:

So there's constantly an, almost like, a tension. I'm very lucky that we have good communication and we both discuss it quite openly, but it does feel like as the mother you try to protect the family and in that, you're the bad person. Which is very difficult.

Jane talks about her role as a mother here and sees this as being commensurate with being the designated protector of the family. Moreover, she suggests that by taking on this role continuously, she is often unwillingly positioned as the ‘bad person’ in the family, the one who says no. With respect to her special needs daughter, there are instances in which Jane can’t rely on negotiating or workarounds or on making tough decisions and saying no. Her daughter has needs which have to be met in specific ways and without compromise.

While Jane and her family's experience of hardship cannot be divorced from the hardship associated with limited resources in general, there are deprivations in Jane's example which are very obviously related to hygiene needs. In Jane's case, this relates to a specific set of circumstances and is most notable with respect to the needs of her special needs daughter. Yet, in many ways, Jane and her family's experiences and circumstances make the perfect case study to be placed at the core of a discussion on why hygiene-related needs should and could be seen as an aspect of basic personal rights. Her daughter needs continuous care, care that she cannot provide for herself. Much of this care devolves on maintaining her wellbeing along with her dignity and humanity by tending to her personal hygiene needs, along with maintaining a clean and safe environment. Because her daughter needs these things, Jane needs to have access to them. Yet, left to the vagaries of the market, this is far from assured. Were personal hygiene rights to be given more stature in the context of rights in general, perhaps then Jane wouldn’t have to fight and struggle so hard for access to, what in her family's circumstances, are really the very basics. Jane's invocation of rights resonates with capability approaches to welfare, which emphasise bodily integrity and dignity as foundational to social justice (Nussbaum, 2000; Sen, 1999). The absence of publicly funded continence supports exposes gaps in Ireland's social protection architecture.

Discussion and conclusion

This study makes visible an under-recognised dimension of material deprivation within contemporary Ireland: hygiene poverty. While food and fuel insecurity have received sustained policy attention, hygiene deprivation remains largely absent from official poverty metrics. Yet the case studies presented here demonstrate that hygiene poverty is not marginal or incidental; it is a structurally produced form of deprivation with implications for dignity, embodiment and social participation. While the findings are presented through four biographical case studies, strong thematic commonalities cut across the narratives. Analysing these shared patterns enables identification of hygiene poverty as a structurally produced form of deprivation rather than a collection of individualised experiences.

Drawing on Townsend's (1979) concept of relative deprivation, hygiene products meet the criteria of socially perceived necessities. Their absence does not merely produce inconvenience but restricts the capacity to participate in society on socially acceptable terms. Hygiene practices are deeply socialised and morally regulated. Douglas (1966) demonstrated that cleanliness functions symbolically as a marker of order and belonging, while Goffman (1963) showed how bodily presentation can become a basis for stigma. Across the four cases, hygiene deprivation exposed participants to the risk of embarrassment, shame and social withdrawal; dynamics that extend beyond income insufficiency into the terrain of social recognition. Importantly, hygiene poverty is not reducible to poverty in general. Children, caring responsibilities and disability emerged across all four cases as key intensifiers of hygiene poverty. Households with children experienced heightened exposure to hygiene deprivation due to increased consumption needs, the non-discretionary nature of many hygiene items, and the heightened social visibility of bodily cleanliness among children and adolescents. Parents described prioritising children's hygiene needs, including nappies, continence products, deodorant and age-appropriate personal care items over their own, often at the expense of adult wellbeing. These pressures were particularly acute where disability or additional needs were present. In Fiona's and Jane's accounts, disability generated both higher volumes of consumption and strict product specificity, limiting opportunities to substitute cheaper alternatives and locking households into sustained expenditure on hygiene essentials. Where state provision was partial or absent, these costs were absorbed privately, amplifying financial strain and emotional stress. The findings thereby demonstrate that hygiene poverty is not evenly distributed within households, nor is it adequately captured by income-based measures alone. Instead, it is shaped by life-course position, caring roles and the presence of disability, underscoring the need to recognise hygiene deprivation as a relational and structurally patterned form of inequality rather than an outcome of individual budgeting decisions. Moreover, hygiene poverty, while rooted in inadequate income and rising living costs, operates through embodied mechanisms. The inability to afford menstrual products, continence supports, or oral hygiene items affects bodily integrity directly. At the same time, the social visibility of hygiene standards amplifies moral judgement. Skeggs’ (1997) work on respectability illuminates how women, in particular, bear responsibility for maintaining both their own bodily presentation and the cleanliness of the household. The narratives of Grace, Fiona and Jane demonstrate the gendered distribution of sacrifice, with mothers routinely forgoing their own hygiene needs to protect children from stigma. From a social policy perspective, hygiene poverty reflects both income inadequacy and incomplete welfare provisioning. Esping-Andersen's (1990) framework of decommodification is instructive here. Where essential goods remain fully market-dependent, access is mediated by purchasing power rather than social right. Hygiene products, though foundational to health and dignity, are treated as private consumer goods rather than collectively guaranteed necessities. The commodification of bodily maintenance leaves households vulnerable to price volatility and corporate pricing strategies. The findings further expose the limits of Ireland's partial movement toward universal healthcare. In cases such as speech therapy, dermatological care or continence provision, families absorb costs that would be socialised under a fully universal model. Sláintecare commitments signal intent toward universalism, yet implementation gaps shift responsibility back to households. Hygiene poverty, therefore, sits at the intersection of income policy, healthcare design and market regulation. Finally, the case studies presented here challenge the assumption that hygiene poverty is confined to a narrowly defined ‘poor’ population. While acute deprivation is most severe among low-income households, the pressures described by middle-income participants indicate broader structural strain. Rising costs of social reproduction in the form of childcare, healthcare, housing and domestic goods compress disposable income across class positions (Fraser, 2016). Hygiene deprivation emerges where these cumulative pressures converge.

Policy implications

The findings demand structural responses rather than piecemeal adjustments. Three areas of reform are necessary. The policy implications outlined below flow directly from the sociological analysis of stigma, care, and market dependence developed in the preceding sections.

• 1.

Measurement reform: Hygiene deprivation must be formally integrated into national poverty monitoring instruments such as SILC. Without systematic measurement, hygiene poverty remains statistically invisible. A hygiene module could include enforced lack of core items (toothpaste, menstrual products, deodorant, nappies, continence supplies and basic cleaning products). This would align with established deprivation methodology (Mack and Lansley, 1985) and enable evidence-based policy design.

2.

Income adequacy and targeted supports: Existing social protection rates must be assessed against the real cost of socially necessary hygiene goods. Benchmarking exercises, similar to Minimum Essential Standard of Living research in Ireland, should explicitly include hygiene items. In the short term, automatic hygiene supplements could be attached to payments for:

Lone parents

Carers

Households with disabled members

Families with infants and adolescents

However, the complexity of experiences documented here indicates that targeted supports alone will be insufficient.

• 3.

Movement toward universal provision: Given the public health externalities and dignity implications of hygiene goods, a universal basic provision model warrants serious consideration. Universal Basic Services frameworks (Coote and Percy, 2020) provide a blueprint for treating essential goods as collectively guaranteed rather than privately purchased. Implementation could include:

Free provision of menstrual and continence products through schools, health centres and community pharmacies.

Public procurement agreements to supply hygiene starter kits to low-income households.

Removal of any remaining indirect taxation on essential hygiene goods.

Integration of basic oral hygiene kits into public dental programmes.

Such measures would shift hygiene from discretionary consumption toward a social right, reducing exposure to market volatility and mitigating stigma.

Conclusion

Hygiene poverty is a structurally produced form of deprivation that operates through the body and through systems of moral judgement. It is sustained by income inadequacy, incomplete healthcare universalism and the commodification of social reproduction. Recognising hygiene as a socially necessary good requires not only improved measurement but a rethinking of how essential bodily needs are provisioned within the welfare state. Without structural reform, hygiene poverty will remain an invisible but deeply consequential driver of inequality.