Last year, close to 10 percent of the French population had need of free food distribution, a record proportion in peacetime in the country, according to an annual report on poverty in France by one of the country’s principal social and humanitarian aid associations, the Secours Catholique.
That proportion of the population was calculated using official statistics from the French health ministry’s department for social cohesion, the DGCS, and which indicate that as many as seven million people, out of France’s total population of about 67.3 million, required food aid in 2020 to meet their daily needs. While the Covid-19 epidemic brought increased fragility to the lives of the poor, that compared with an estimated 2.6 million people in 2006, and 5.5 million in 2017, according to DGCS figures.
“The striking image of 2020, in a country recognised the world over for its agricultural production and its gastronomy, will remain the queues waiting in front of food bank distribution points, a large number of people presenting themselves there for the first time,” noted the introduction to the report.
Published on November 18th, the 134-page document (which can be downloaded here), reported that in 2020, the Secours Catholique intervened materially to help around 777,000 people survive poverty conditions (made up of 409,500 adults and 367,500 minors). The association requests those it helps to anonymously provide details of their resources, and from this information it found that the median monthly income of individuals it supplied aid to was 537 euros, significantly below the 739 euros income level officially regarded as representing “extreme poverty”, and less than half that which is officially considered to be the initial poverty watershed (1,102 euros in 2019).
While government emergency financial measures introduced last year in face of the economic effects of the coronavirus epidemic, from furlough schemes to reduced or postponed social charges for the self-employed, the Covid-19 health crisis significantly degraded the lives of the worst-off, the report underlined. In a survey of those who received aid from the association, 28% said they had lost income during the first lockdown on public movement in France, introduced in the spring of 2020, while 61% of households said their budgets had been further depleted by the entailed closure of schools and school canteens. “There lies a barometer of a deeper [social] precarity, of which the difficulties with food are but the most visible aspect,” noted the report.
In a separate survey by the Secours Catholique, involving 1,088 households among those it supplied with cheque-coupons that can be used to buy food in retail outlets like supermarkets, 27% said they regularly went without food for a whole day. Those concerned include the employed, single-parent families, retired people, and students. More than 80% of those receiving food aid, both among the questioned households and others the association provided help to, said they were preoccupied by the health consequences of their situation.
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Jean Merckaert, the association’s director of advocacy and who co-wrote the report’s analytical summary, said the report centred on the problems of food insecurity – the Secours Catholique provides assistance for a wide range of needs – because of the massive numbers of people requiring food aid in 2020, and that for many among them this was for the first time. “Everyone in a country like ours has become used to the idea that the most [socially] precarious are fed in this way,” he commented.
The association noted that among the people it last year gave aid to, a third of those who were entitled to the RSA top-up benefit for very low income earners were not in fact receiving it, while a quarter of those entitled to family benefits were similarly not paid the allowance.
“For people in the situation of chronic insecurity, it’s not our material assistance which will help them to get out of poverty,” said Merckaert. “The government doesn’t make that distinction. It has institutionalised the sub-contracting to associations for the social protection of food provision.”
To provide the poor with access to a healthy diet, the Secours Catholique argues for a rise in minimum welfare benefits and the introduction of a guaranteed monthly income for all those above the age of 18 which would be equivalent to half the national median monthly income (the latter was 1,837 euros in 2019).
Simone (not her real name) is a 25-year-old law student at Lille university. She receives a student grant of 573 euros per month. Her family is unable to help her financially, and she takes on occasional jobs in parallel to her studies. She says she tries “to live normally”, but that her financial situation is “a source of worry”. She would like to see a rise in student grants because of the difficulties in balancing her studies with work. “Studying take up time, and students would be more productive if they didn’t have financial worries.”
Simone recounted that at the start of every month, she allows herself a few relative treats while shopping for food before reality kicks in again and it’s a diet of what she called “soups and tins” and looking for special offers.
Simone has a subscription for a local gym, but can afford little else in the way of pleasurable activity. She has friends in similar financial difficulty, with whom she shares meals and escapes an otherwise largely depressing daily existence.
She recognises that she is in a precarious situation, but she holds back from asking for food aid like that provided by the Secours Catholique so as, in her words, to leave it “for those who really need it”. She would go the food bank, she said, if she finds herself really in trouble, as was the case in 2020, when she was unable to pay her rent and electricity bills. The association gave her financial help with that, while the Crous organisation, which manages a number of services for higher education students, including canteens, provided her with meal coupons.
“I try not to think too much about the financial side nor feel sorry for myself, I tell myself that I’ll be out of it later on,” said Simone.
Aurore is a 39-year-old single mother with four children aged between six and 19, who lives in the Ariège département (county) in south-west France. She receives the RSA benefit payment and also family allowances benefit, which total a monthly 1,200 euros. Her home rent is a monthly 220 euros after deduction of housing benefits.
She receives aid from the Secours Catholique, for which she also helps out as a volunteer. “I live with an overdraft,” she said. “Previously, I had an overdraft of 400 euros, but now, since the 7th [of November] I’m at 1,000 euros. I don’t know how I’m going to cope. Next month is Christmas, I’d like my children to have at least one present each.”
Any unplanned expense places her in difficulty. Her son needed spectacles, which cost around 400 euros. The social security system refunds 4 euros, and the rest she negotiated to pay off in four instalments. Every time she can, she staggers payments, like the veterinary costs she incurred to treat her cat.
Like for so many people in rural areas, having a car is essential to get around for even the most basic activities. She stretched to put money aside to buy a car from a friend for 1,700 euros, paid off in three instalments. For petrol, the price of which has risen steeply over recent months, she travels across the nearby border with Spain early in the month to fill up before her overdraft kicks in. “It’s the first time that I’ve been in so much of a hard time,” she said. “Everything has risen [in price], and Covid has complicated everything.”
As the cold weather kicked in this autumn, Aurore was still getting about in sandals while waiting to find the money to buy shoes. She said her mother gave her a pair of trainers instead. She waits until the cold becomes too much before heating her home and, before that moment arrives, asks her children to wear their puffer jackets inside.
For food and clothing for herself and her children, she travels twice per month to the nearest Secours Catholique distribution point, and also to the Restos du cœur, another charitable association that distributes meals and food parcels. But even so, she says that the amounts she comes away with –she gave the example of a 15-day supply for the family made up of five chicken breasts, five steaks, and five breaded fish fillets – are hardly sufficient to meet the appetite of her two teenage sons. She says she would like to be able to give her family a better diet, with products of better quality.
Aurore makes her own spreads, doesn’t buy bottled drinks, and purchases as much as possible only supermarket brands. To feed her children, she said: “I get by as best I can so as not to deprive them. I couldn’t care less about myself.”
Jean Merckaert of the Secours Catholique argues that for the health and dignity of those in need, instead of handouts of cheap foodstuffs, better access to quality food must be put in place, and which could include the creation of subsidised retail outlets – dedicated small shops – and schemes like shared vegetable gardens. “The beneficiaries [of food aid] have the feeling of being humiliated by recovering the scraps from large retail outlets,” he said. “Some feel shame and prefer to go without eating.” The Secours Catholique intends to publicly challenge candidates running in next April’s presidential elections for their propositions in face of the unprecedented crisis.
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The original French version of this report can be found here.
English version by Graham Tearse