Le patrimoine des Français

The Patrimony of the French
Extracted from a work by Louis Dirn (the pseudonym of a group of sociologists who have been meeting for 15 years at the French Economic Research Institute, OFCE), “The French Society of Trends 1975-1995,” this text relates to the evolution over the last twenty years of French patrimony.
He reveals the changes occurring on the one hand at the level of the accumulation and debt behaviour of households (in particular under the effect of interest rates and inflation rates), and on the other hand, of the composition of patrimony (consisting of housing and financial assets).
Its author, Louis Chauvel, furthermore underlines how inequalities are increasing (10% of the most wealthy households concentrate 50% of the patrimony of households and receive 70% of the income which it generates), particularly between age categories and between generations.