The rate of material and social deprivation, another way of measuring poverty, reached 14% in metropolitan France at the start of 2022, its highest level since its creation in 2013, announced on Friday July 21, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee). This rate reached 13.4% in 2020, and 12.4% in 2013.
This increase is due in particular to the increase in energy prices: 10.2% of households declare that they cannot heat their homes sufficiently, compared to 6.1% in 2021 and 5% in 2018. Insee sees in this in particular the impact of the increase in the price of domestic fuel oil, “heating fuel that vulnerable households use more than others”.
Unlike the monetary poverty rate, which is based on household income, the deprivation rate is based on households giving up certain products or services, such as owning two pairs of shoes, heating properly, eating meat or fish every other day, going on vacation for a week each year, meeting friends at least once a month for a drink or a meal, etc.
France close to the European average
If a household accumulates at least five of these renunciations from a list of thirteen elements “considered desirable, even necessary, to have an acceptable standard of living”, it is in a situation of “material and social deprivation”.
The deprivation rate depends a lot on household composition, observes INSEE: it reaches 6.8% among childless couples, 15.8% among single people, and 31.1% in single-parent families.
These figures come from the “Statistics on resources and living conditions” survey, for which INSEE questioned more than 17,000 households, i.e. nearly 39,000 people.
France is “close to the European average”, with the deprivation rate in European Union countries reaching 12.7%, with wide disparities – 11.5% in Germany, 9% in Italy, less than 5% in Luxembourg, Scandinavia and some Eastern European countries.
