Tuesday, June 04, 2019

France's Rising Inequality

The Yellow Vest protests centered on the urban rural divide and the resources eaten up by the Paris region of Île-de-France. But a new study shows that the country’s wealthiest region is also the most deeply unequal. “With the Yellow Vest movement, there has been a lot of talk about poverty as a rural problem, as if cities are always better off,” Mariette Sagot told FRANCE 24. “But that’s not true. There are poor suburban and rural areas, but deep poverty remains an urban phenomenon.”

The larger Paris region of Île-de-France is home to nearly 19 percent of the French population and represents 30 percent of the country’s GDP, but the report “Gentrification and growing poverty in the heart of Île-de-France” published Monday by the Planning and Urbanism Institute (IAU) shows that inequality has grown considerably since the early 2000s. Household income data from 2001 to 2015 paints a startling picture of deepening inequality and entrenched segregation in the country’s largest metropolis.

“What we’ve seen since 2010 in particular is a further concentration of wealth in the wealthy areas, while poverty has become more entrenched in the poorest areas,” said Sagot. The wealthy are particularly likely to live among themselves. Half of the wealthiest households (the top 10 percent) live in just 26 of Île-de-France’s 1276 communes. Meanwhile the overall poverty rate in Île-de-France hit 15.9 percent in 2015, up from 12.3 percent nine years earlier. The poorest areas are seeing “a concentration of underqualified workers, often immigrants, with higher rates of unemployment or of precarious employment, and a growing number of single-parent households that have contributed to stigmatisation and deteriorating economic conditions,” emphasised the report.

As housing prices tripled between 1999 and 2018, housing has become a greater indicator of economic status, with home owners growing richer and public housing residents growing poorer compared to the average household. Mobility in the housing market is also down. High housing prices and low economic mobility mean that populations in rich and poor areas are crystalising as people stay in their homes for longer. Families are less likely to have moved in the last two years, particularly if they live in public housing. Social housing, once considered a stepping stone to home ownership or renting on the private market, has become permanent for many.


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