During the Covid-19 recession, poverty did not increase, according to INSEE – archyworldys

Has the crisis linked to the Covid-19 pandemic, which resulted in an 8% drop in GDP for the year 2020, caused poverty to explode in France? In the fall of 2020, Alerte, a collective of associations, sounded the alarm: a million people would have fallen into precariousness due to the crisis. A year later, Wednesday November 3, INSEE delivers a study that puts the impact of the crisis into perspective: in 2020, the poverty rate – which is defined as a standard of living below 60% of the median standard of living – affected 14.6% of the French population, or 9.3 million people. A stable figure compared to 2019. Inequalities, according to this estimate, have not changed further. In other words, the historic recession of 2020 will not have increased poverty in France.

“The stability of inequalities in living standards and monetary poverty can be explained by the exceptional measures put in place to fight against the effects of the health crisis”, according to INSEE. Partial activity has thus made it possible to avoid an explosion in unemployment, the targeted aid has supported household income, and the solidarity fund has offset, at least in part, the fall in the turnover of the self-employed. Without these various devices, calculates INSEE, the poverty rate would have increased by 0.6 points and inequalities would have increased. What’s more, “It is impossible to assess the extent of business bankruptcies and the destruction of jobs that would have occurred” without these support devices.

Methodology

The fact remains that the conclusion of this study, by the very admission of the Director General of INSEE, Jean-Luc Tavernier, who explains it in a blog article, “May astonish”. One of the explanations lies in the methodology employed. The survey relates only to metropolitan France, and to households “Ordinary” according to the INSEE nomenclature, namely 95% of the French population.

It therefore excludes people who live in collectives or communities – student residences, retirement homes, barracks, prisons, etc. -, as well as homeless people, ie a total of 1.4 million people. Among these categories of the population, if the elderly, whose pensions have not been affected, have not lost income, students, on the other hand, have been massively affected, notably losing their odd jobs.

“Poverty has undoubtedly intensified, but has not exploded” Jean-Luc Tavernier, Director General of INSEE

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