Very rich are getting richer in France

The number of very rich households in France grew between 2004 and 2007, while the difference between everyone else's wages stayed relatively stable, according to a report released Friday by Insee, the French statistics institute.

AFP

“The highest incomes rose sharply in France,” explained Jean-Louis Lhéritier of the Insee.

The report, based on figures from 2007, shows a growing gap between very wealthy households – those in the top five per cent of wage earners – and everyone else.

Some 133,000 full time employees in the private sector - the so-called very high wage earners - earned more than 215,600 euros a year.

The number of people who earned more than 100,000 euros a month rose by 28 per cent between 2004 and 2007, according to Lhéritier. And there was a 70 per cent in those who earned more than 500,000 euros a month, which is only one per cent of the population.

The average income in 2007 was 21,080 euros a year, with the poorest ten per cent earning less than 10,010 euros and the richest ten per cent earning 33,900 euros.

But for the most part, there has not been a big change in economic equality, with the difference between the richest and the poorest staying mostly the same since 2005.

Eight million people in France live below the poverty line, on less than 908 euros a month.

"Poverty affects 13.4 per cent of people living in France," Lhéritier told RFI. "We observe that poverty affects single-parent households the most ... it also affects those living alone, large famiiles with more than three children, families where the main wage earner is unemployed. People become poor often because of family events."

One third of immigrants live below the poverty line.The study defines an immigrant as someone who was born outside of France, or who is of a foreign nationality, even if naturalised as French. Mixed families – with one spouse French and the other foreign – were not taken into consideration for the study

When the statistics are broken down by places of origin, 42 per cent of people from Africa live under the poverty line, compared with 24 per cent of people who came to France from other European countries.