“A report on poverty should be submitted to Parliament every year”estimates Louis Maurin, co-founder and director of the Observatory of Inequalities. It is to compensate for the absence of such an inventory that the independent organization publishes its own, Tuesday December 3, with the ambition of“enlighten the public debate”.
Ce Report on poverty in Francepublished every two years, brings together and puts into perspective numerous data, partly unknown, in a language accessible to all. The authors count 5.1 million poor people in France, setting the monetary poverty threshold at 50% of the median income, or 1,014 euros net per month for a single person. This threshold is that used by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, while the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee), like other European countries, places the threshold at 60% of the level median living wage, or 1,216 euros, which leads it to identify 9.1 million poor people.
Rather than focusing on annual variations, the report shows developments over the long term. “After a significant decline in the 1970s and 1980s, the poverty rate has stabilized”he begins. Then, between 2002 and 2022, the number of poor people at the 50% threshold increased by 1.4 million people. The increase in population is not the only reason, since the poverty rate has also increased, from 6.6% to 8.1%. As for the median standard of living of the poor, it has only gained 60 euros in twenty years, reaching 832 euros. “We have one of the best social models in the world, but we see that the standard of living before social benefits is falling », notes Louis Maurin.
Diving into the territories
“It’s a slow rise in povertycontinues the director of the Observatory of Inequalities. But it is all the more poorly experienced since Emmanuel Macron made a very strong speech in 2018, aiming to eradicate extreme poverty. » Inequalities have also increased: the poorest 10% only receive 3.3% of the total mass of income, after taxes and social benefits, a share which has changed little since 1996. At the other end, the richest 10% obtain 24.4% of income, up 2.2 points over the period.
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88 pages long, the report describes the nature and extent of the deprivations of “ordinary poverty” – not being able to heat oneself properly, not being able to go on vacation, not being able to meet an unexpected expense of 1,000 euros…
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