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INSEE

Standard of living in France: where do you fit?

France is slowly recovering from the economic crisis and economic equality is actually shrinking new figures suggest. Where do you fit in, when compared to the rest of the population?

Published: 22 September 2015 12:11 CEST
Standard of living in France: where do you fit?
The richest 10 percent of people in France had a standard of living of more than €37,200 in 2013. Photo: AFP

New figures from France’s national stats office Insee provide an insight into the economic health of the country’s households and revealed some noteworthy trends.

Significantly the stats revealed there had been the first fall in poverty rates since 2008, albeit a very slight one, with the niveau de vie (essentially the post-tax and social charges income of a household divided by number of people in each household) of the country's worse-off increasingly slightly for the first time since 2008.

Interestingly at the other end of the scale the post-tax income of France's most wealthy saw a slight decrease, due in the main to a rise in taxes, meaning that inequality in between rich and poor in France has actually decreased.

Although it's not yet perhaps time to celebrate with 14 percent of French people still living below the poverty line.

Here's the key stats:

€1,667

The median post-tax income, or “niveau de vie”, in metropolitan France hardly changed in 2013, hitting €20,000 a year, or €1,667 a month. That means half the population had an income of more than €1,667 a month after the tax man had taken his share while the other 50 percent saw less than that amount coming in.

For a family of two adults and two children younger than 14, the median after-tax income was €3,500 a month in 2013, or 0.1 percent lower than a year earlier.

€37,200

The richest 10 percent of people in France had an annual post-tax income of more than €37,200 in 2013. At the other end of the scale, for the poorest 10 percent this figure was lower than €10,730. In other words, the nation’s richest 10 percent have a standard of living more than 3.5 times higher than the poorest tenth.

But in a surprise finding, the standard of living for the poorest 10 percent climbed 1.1 percent in 2013, while the incomes of the country’s richest dropped 1.8 percent, suggesting a decrease in equality.

€1,170

This was the median post-tax income of France’s jobseekers in 2013, up 2.3 percent on the previous year. However, over a third of people in this group live below the poverty threshold, set at €1,000 a month.

0.3 percent

The Insee study shows 14 percent of French people lived in poverty in 2013, down 0.3 percent on a year earlier, and the first fall in five years, bring the rate down to 2010 levels.

But while the news is positive, more French people still live in poverty than was the case in 2008 when that number was 13 percent.

8.6 million

The total number of people living in poverty in France in 2013 was 8.6 million people, with the median income for this group climbing slightly from €788 in 2012 to €802 a year later.

1.6 million

The number of young people in France aged 18 to 29 with an income of less than €1,000 was 1.6 million in 2013.     

SEE ALSO:  A portrait of modern France in ten key stats

 

 

 

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POVERTY

Queuing for food handouts: How the pandemic has left thousands more going hungry in Spain

A year after the pandemic hit Spain, the need for food handouts has soared in the country, especially by workers in the sectors hit hardest by the economic crisis that followed.

Published: 19 March 2021 09:22 CET
Queuing for food handouts: How the pandemic has left thousands more going hungry in Spain
Reina Chambi, 39, queues to receive food aid outside San Ramon Nonato parish in Madrid. Photos: Oscar del Pozo/AFP

Although her face is covered by a black mask, Rita Carrasco still wears bright red lipstick. But her easy smile faltered when she had to join Madrid’s “hunger lines” for food aid.

“It was a hard moment. I felt shame,” says the 41-year-old Mexican, who lost her job as a theatre teacher when Spain’s tight lockdown began in March 2020.

Since then, she has not been able to find work and has used up all her savings.

Over the past year, the demand for food packages has soared in Spain, especially among those employed in sectors worst-hit by the resulting economic crisis.

Last year, the Catholic charity Caritas said it helped half a million people who had never before asked for food packages.

Since December, Carrasco (pictured above) has been going every Friday to a soup kitchen in Carabanchel, a working-class neighbourhood in southern Madrid, to collect a box of groceries.

She also helps distribute food as a volunteer.

“Giving and receiving changes your perspective,” she says.

Beans and fruit

Wearing yellow vests, the volunteers hand out fruit, cereal and beans at a church building to those lining up in a narrow street outside.

The neighbourhood has a high immigrant population and many in the queue are Latin American women.

People used to be able to eat a hot meal onsite, but virus restrictions now mean they can only serve food to take away.

It is one of four soup kitchens opened last spring by the Alvaro del Portillo charity.

Before the pandemic, there was only one, which served around 900 people.

Since then the number of people using the soup kitchens has soared to around 2,000.

“As the months have gone by, we’ve noticed things easing,” says Susana Hortigosa, who runs the charity.

“Although the level of demand is still higher than before the pandemic, it has dropped slightly because people have started getting their furlough payouts or have found a few hours of work” as the economy has picked up, although most still need help, she says.

The leftwing coalition government of Pedro Sanchez has unblocked €40 billion ($48 billion) since the start of the crisis to fund the furlough scheme.

But with the administration overrun with claims, it has often taken months for the payouts to materialise.

‘A great help’

Such was the case with Reina Chambi (pictured below), a 39-year-old carer for the elderly whose husband was employed at a hotel. When the pandemic hit, they were both left jobless.

“My husband stopped working completely and they took a long time to make the furlough payment so we had to turn to the church for help,” says the mother-of-two, waiting outside a soup kitchen in the freezing wind in the Vallecas district.

While the payout has given the family some breathing room, the couple are still jobless, meaning they still need food packages.

“It’s a great help because we don’t have to buy milk, chickpeas, noodles, those things at least. And we can spend (the payout) on detergent or meat,” says Chambi, who misses the “stable life” she enjoyed after arriving from Bolivia 15 years ago.

Even before 2019, official figures showed more than one in four people in Spain were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, one of the highest rates in Europe.

And the pandemic has left the most vulnerable even more at risk.

“It’s so frustrating. Each time I try to escape this situation, something else happens,” sighs Amanda Gomez, 53.

Divorced just before the pandemic, she is raising two children on her own, one with Down’s Syndrome, on a cleaner’s tiny salary.

But she’s not ready to give up — a keen cook, she’s looking up recipes online to “make the most” of the food she’s got, and she is also beginning to bake cakes to order and deliver them to people’s homes.

The hope is that one day she might be able to open her own bakery.

“You dream big because dreaming doesn’t cost anything,” she says.

“What I want is to be able to go to the local church without asking for anything. Just to help out.”

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