In mid-January the charity Oxfam raised the alarm about growing inequalities between rich and poor in the world. Yet what is the situation in France? In 2003 the French philosopher Patrick Savidan co-founded the Observatoire des Inégalités, a body to monitor and produce studies on this important issue. In the summer of 2015 it published a major report that sought to describe the current position in France.
In an interview with Mediapart below, Patrick Savidan, a professor in philosophy at the University of Poitiers in central west France, explains how since 2008 France has joined other developed nations in witnessing an ever greater trend towards inequality. The rich had already been getting wealthier in France for the last 30 years. What is new, he says, is that the poorest are also getting poorer.
Savidan also revisits a paradox that he addresses in his latest book (which he spoke about on Mediapart here): that while the French declare themselves to be ardently in favour of equality, they are less and less supportive of universal policies of social protection.
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Mediapart: Is France in the same situation as other developed countries when it comes to inequalities?
Patrick Savidan: From the middle of the 2000s and until 2007 there was a stronger demand for social protection because of the crisis, like everywhere in Europe. France resisted rather better than its neighbours, because the country could rely on a well-organised and not so badly-funded social state. But since 2008-2009 things have very clearly got worse. France is now in line with other countries in seeing a worsening situation in the social situation. The state did not react and today we can see in our country the same trends as elsewhere in the world.
A study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) at the end of 2014 shows that in 16 out of 21 OECD countries there has been a worsening of the situation since the middle of the 1980s, a net increase in inequalities. In the United States, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, in Germany and even in the Scandinavian countries. It's a generalised trend, an alignment of lowest-bidder social policies [editor's note, in other words policies that cost the least].
Mediapart: How are these inequalities reflected in France?
P.S.: We are really at a turning point today. That needs to be underlined because if we don't take action, there's no reason why things will reverse on their own. For a very long time inequalities grew wider because we saw an explosion from the top, the wealthier were becoming wealthier. It was linked to the development of the property market but also the liberalisation of the financial markets. Positions of social dominance were reinforced. The very highest incomes, the 1% or 2% of the highest, took off in the 1990s, 10 to 20 times faster than others.
Since the 2007 crisis the very highest incomes have certainly continued to progress – they have only slightly suffered from the crisis in France, with a very occasional lowering in income, due in particular to the rise in taxes targeting them when François Hollande came to power. But, and this is new, inequalities in income and assets are also growing, in particular because for 60% to 70% of the population their income has either stayed the same or gone down. And the lower you go down the social scale the worse the deterioration is. The richer you are, the richer you get, but the poorer you are, the poorer you get.
Mediapart: According to you this situation will not resolve itself, even with the return of economic growth?
P.S.: No. Of course growth brings with it a reduction in inequalities. But it's an absurdity to think that it will sort out all the problems. [Growth] is without doubt a part of the solution but it's not the solution in itself. The almost fantastical way that 'Growth' is invoked is a way of masking the real problem.
Mediapart: The inequalities don't just relate to incomes and assets, and your organisation monitors many areas.
P.S.: In fact we're seeing inequalities widening in relation to life expectancy, depending on one's social background – even in a country as developed as France. That's also a very great source of concern. It's the same observation with educational inequalities. We haven't really managed to reform the system, even though in France having a qualification very much determines one's economic success.
While in certain areas you need levels of international consultation and cooperation that's very difficult to get, when it comes to education France has all the tools it needs to take action. The diagnosis was made a long time ago. Whatever their intellectual and theoretical orientation, everyone agrees in saying there is a problem and describes it in more or less the same terms. We should have been able to solve this problem.
Mediapart: The question of professional and inter-generational mobility seems to be a particularly acute problem in France. Why?
P.S.: Since the 1980s we've seen stronger professional mobility … but it's somewhat negative. On the whole people are downwardly mobile professionally in France. This downwards mobility is not very pronounced spread across the whole population, but it is nonetheless a very strong indicator. Between the start of the 1980s and the beginning of the 2000s, the proportion of men who experienced downwards professional mobility doubled, even if it remains low: it has gone from 3% to around 6%. The change for women is more or less the same.
It's the same picture with inter-generational mobility, which compares parents' jobs with those of their children: since the start of 1990s the trend has been downwards rather than an improvement.
Mediapart: In your book you analyse a French paradox: a strongly-declared rejection of inequalities but an ever-greater reluctance to accept a powerful social state...
P.S.: There is in fact a strong tension in relation to social protection, and a recent study by CRÉDOC [editor's note, a body that studies living conditions in France] demonstrates this very well. The French are attached to the social state, but they distinguish more and more carefully between those types of measures which they support and those towards which they show a certain criticism. Statistically, at a national level, priority is now given to financing pensions and to supporting dependent elderly people. There's a major generational gap: around 46% of people under 25 put combatting poverty as their priority. Yet this is the priority for only 27% of people over 70.
French people still accept just as much [as in the past] anything that relates to contributory benefits or any measure involving reciprocity: if people pay their contributions, we have 'the right' to help them. But anything to do with unconditional [benefits] or universality, on the other hand, comes under attack. That's the case, for example, with unemployment benefit or child benefit.
Mediapart: Has this paradoxical approach changed over time?
P.S.: Yes, strongly and swiftly: between 2004 and 2014 the proportion of people thinking that unemployment benefit should benefit only those who have contributed went from 25% to 50%. And this change gets greater with time. This takes us back to a very general trend, to the way in which we today experience our obligations and perceptions in terms of solidarity. People tend to defend specific and selected forms of solidarity, universal [benefits] a lot less so.
But what's worrying is that, at the same time, more than 80% of the population – people of all social and political persuasions - will express strong attachment to social justice. Yet one of the instruments for reducing poverty is indeed social protection.
Mediapart: How do you analyse this wide disparity?
P.S.: To my mind, and I explain this in my book, it's not a form of irrationality, hypocrisy or even a form of immorality. But this paradox is linked to the fact that individuals have completely lost confidence in their capacity to promote collective forms of progress. They're trying to do their best when faced with the worst.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter