Heating, clothing, transportation... What are the French in precarious situations depriving themselves of?

We know more about the financial difficulties of the French and what they deprive themselves of. The poverty rate is often used to measure the financial difficulties of the French. This consists of counting the number of French people who live on less than 50% of the median income, or 1,014 euros. There are approximately 5 million of them.

But imagine a country with only wealthy people; there will always be people below this 50% threshold, who will be considered poor even though they have no financial difficulties. What the INSEE measures in a recently published study is much more instructive: it is the real deprivations suffered by the French.

In 2024, the INSEE tells us, 13% of the population living in ordinary housing, or 8.6 million people, will be in a situation of material and social deprivation , which is more than the 2013-2020 average.

This means that they are unable to cover at least 5 of the 13 major expenditure items identified by INSEE (housing, food, etc.)

There are therefore more and more French people who are unable to cope with, for example, an unforeseen expense of €1,000: 28.5%. These are French people who are unable to heat their homes properly (11.5%, twice as many as in 2014), pay for new clothes, pay their mortgage or rent on time, or afford a new car are also among the criteria that are deteriorating.

On the other hand, there are fewer French people who are unable to afford a week's vacation (21% compared to 25% in 2014), to have a regular leisure activity or to have

The National Council for Policies to Combat Poverty and Social Exclusion has just published a study that identifies three main reasons for the disconnect between the evolution of unemployment and that of poverty: some of the jobs created have not led to an escape from poverty, the deterioration of the situation of inactive retirees or disabled people, and a standard of living of the poorest households that has progressed less than the monetary poverty threshold.