2026 Budget: Poverty rate in France at its highest in 30 years
At a time when the government will have to choose who will have to make sacrifices, one figure may give it pause: the poverty rate in France, which has never been this high since the indicator was first introduced. Jean-Paul Chapel provided details in the "8pm" news on Tuesday, July 8.
This text is a portion of the transcript of the column above. Click on the video to watch it in full.
The poverty rate has never been this high since the indicator was created. "The poverty rate has reached a record level for 30 years. 15.4% of the population in 2023, this is the latest known total figure. That makes 9.8 million poor people," says Jean-Paul Chapel. "This means that they live on less than 1,288 euros per month for a single person and for a couple, it's 1,932 euros. In one year, nearly 650,000 additional people have fallen below this threshold," continues the journalist.
Why this increase? "It is the very high inflation in 2023 that penalizes the most modest, and state aid was reduced that year. In particular, the inflation bonus and the exceptional back-to-school allowance, cuts that particularly affected single-parent families, pushing nearly 300,000 households below the threshold. 34% of these families are poor," Jean-Paul Chapel points out. "The self-employed and micro-entrepreneurs are also very affected, whose poverty rate reaches 19%," he adds.
Non-exhaustive list.
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