What level of wealth is needed to be considered rich in France?
New research by the Observatoire des inégalités redraws traditional classifications
The think tank was created to interpret social inequality
Tyler Olson / Shutterstock
New figures suggesting when people can be considered rich in France have been released by statistics think tank the Observatoire des inégalités, raising questions of how best to define the subjective term so often used in political discourse.
The findings say that a married couple without children are in the ‘rich’ category if their revenues (after tax and social charges and after receiving any benefits) are €6,440 a month or higher. For a couple with two children over the age of 14, this rises to €10,733.
At the other end of the scale, a couple without children are considered ‘poor’ if their revenues are €1,610 or lower. For a couple with two children over the age of 14, the figure is €2,683.
The think tank is funded by private donations, and exists to interpret social inequality through income, class and other factors such as where people live.
The attempt to reach an objective definition of what is widely acknowledged as a subjective term has landed amid the fraught political situation in France, where both the far left and the far right see taxing ‘the rich’ as a solution to the country’s financial problems.
Opinions differ over whether it should refer to income only, or total wealth.
Monthly revenues per household, after paying taxes and social security contributions and after receiving benefits
| - | Single person Couple without children | Couple with two children over 14 | |
| Living in poverty | €1,073 or less | €1,610 or less | €2,683 or less |
| Working class | Under €1,683 | Under €2,525 | Under €4,208 |
| Middle class | €1,683 to €3,119 | €2,525 to €4,679 | €4,028 to €7,798 |
| Upper middle class | €3,119 and above | €4,679 and above | €7,798 and above |
| Considered rich | €4,293 and above | €6,640 and above | €10,733 and above |
Monthly revenues per household, after paying taxes and social security contributions
and after receiving benefits
Source: Observatoire des inégalités interpreting INSEE 2023 figures
Credit: Observatoire des inégalités.
How the figures were reached
To draw up their table, statisticians took an income of less than half of the median as the poverty threshold, a figure also used by national statistics body Insee. They deemed having twice the median to be the threshold for being ‘rich’.
They also applied a calculation called ‘units of consumption’ to work out how much a given household requires in overall revenue to have an equivalent standard of living.
A single adult counts as one unit and a couple without children as 1.5.
The reasoning is that a couple does not require twice as much income as someone living on their own for an equivalent lifestyle.
Children count for half a unit (0.5) if over 14, and 0.3 if under 14.
Using this tool, the revenue of a couple with two children over 14 years old is comparable to 2.5 times that of a single person (1 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 = 2.5).
What does this look like compared with the UK?
It is difficult to obtain comparable figures for the UK.
The UK’s Office for National Statistics published figures up to the year 2022 showing annual net financial wealth (measured by cash in bank and building society accounts, shares, and other financial investments) as zero to £21,400 in the lowest quarter of the population, and £28,900 to £233,600 in the top quarter of the population.
