The number of people living in poverty in France is likely to top the 10 million mark in 2013, according to the indications of a report by the French national institute of statistics and economic studies, INSEE, published this month.
The study, Les niveaux de vie en 2010 (Standards of living in 2010), completes a sad picture of the French economy painted over recent months. The official unemployment total has now passed the 3 million barrier and, when adding together all of the different categories of unemployed, the overall jobless total stands above 5 million – a figure rarely mentioned.
But INSEE’s study, published September 7th, confirms that the social breakdown resulting from the economic crisis goes well beyond these figures and is the cause of endless misery and countless inequalities. The statistics point to a social landscape in ruins, and the findings will reopen the debate over economic policymaking and the road of austerity chosen by the new French socialist government.
The study itself is a sober document that sets out living standards, and therefore also poverty levels (see page two), in France in 2010. INSEE analyses all of the available data on French people’s sources of income to get a precise estimate of trends in living standards. It is those trends that indicate that 10 million people will have fallen below the poverty line by 2013.
The statisticians’ rigorous approach requires lengthy research, and the most recent figures on the decisive matter of living standards and poverty are, as a result, regularly at least two years old. Governments are therefore almost flying blind in economic and social policy, without any means of measuring inequality and poverty in real time. But as the crisis has worsened continuously since 2010, it is clear that the trends in poverty detected by the statisticians must also have worsened since.
For 2010 the study shows some very worrying developments. Except for the very wealthiest, all French people saw their living standards fall, while poverty increased sharply, especially among the young.
These compelling statistics show that the median disposable income for people in France in 2010 was 19,270 euros per head of population. Disposable income is the amount of money available for each person in a household after payment of taxes and social charges and receipt of welfare payments. It is effectively what families have in their pockets to pay for everything, and this median figure equates to 1,610 euros a month. By implication, because it is a median figure, half the population in France were living on less than this modest sum. Importantly, the net minimum wage in France, following its latest increase on July 1st, is 1,118 euros per month.
INSEE shows that living standards declined in 2010, falling 0.5% in real terms after increasing an average of 1.7% annually between 2004 and 2008, and by just 0.4% in 2009. The significant new development is that all social groups, save the very wealthiest, saw their living standards decline or stagnate. "In contrast to the rest of the population, the disposable income of the richest 5% has started to rise again, growing 1.3% in real terms," the INSEE noted.
Scroll down screen below to read the INSEE study (available in French only), which can also be downloaded here.
Fanning the flames of povert with austerity
Conversely, the number of people living below the poverty line has markedly increased. Economists define poverty as those living on less than 60% of median disposable income. In France in 2010, this meant those who had less than 964 euros per month to live on.
The number living below the poverty line increased by around 400,000 a year from the start of the financial crisis, rising from 7.8 million in 2008 to 8.2 million in 2009, and more than 8.6 million in 2010. The study also contains the disturbing observation that children are the main victims of this rise. "In 2010 the increase in poverty particularly affected children, for whom the poverty rate increased by 1.9 percentage points, after a 0.4 point rise in 2009, to reach 19.6%," INSEE said. This means that almost one in five children (under-18s) in France lives below the poverty line. In comparison, the poverty rate for the population as a whole rose by 0.6 points in 2010, to 14.1%.
While the figures provide a measure of the social suffering and despair under the government of former conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy, they also send a grave warning to the new socialist government of President François Hollande.
At the core of the unemployment numbers are those people who are looking for a job and who have no work at all, what the French national employment agency, Pôle Emploi, calls Category A unemployment. This is the category that governments generally refer to when citing unemployment figures, which was the case when labour minister Michel Sapin recently acknowledged that the 3 million unemployment mark had been passed.
But this narrow definition of unemployment does not include those who are looking for a job while engaged in bits and scraps of odd-jobs to financially survive. Taking into account all of the unemployment categories, a much larger figure appears; it hit 5 million in June, and largely without comment, rising to 5.05 million at the end of July.
Beyond this, there is the wider group of all those living in poverty. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault cannot ignore the obvious - that the increase in poverty must have continued after 2010. The economic crisis has worsened, leading to a continuous rise in unemployment, so it is self-evident that the number living in poverty must also have continued to increase at the same pace as before 2010, if not faster.
Even if making the modest assumption that the number living in poverty continued to increase by 400,000 a year, which was the trend in 2009 and 2010, then their total numbers will have reached 8.6 million in 2010, and 9 million in 2011. France could well have 10 million living below the poverty line in 2013.
Have the government's economic and social policies have been designed in such a way as to reduce these widening social divisions? There is little, if anything, to suggest so, aside from minor measures, such as the 25% increase in the means-tested allowance for families for the new school year (for the purchase of school books and similar items). Rather, the opposite appears to be the case; the government's austerity measures, and the wage restrictions resulting from them, will deepen the recession, further fuelling the social crisis in which France finds itself.
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English version: Steve Whitehouse
(Editing by Graham Tearse)