France : l'échelle sociale se transforme

France: The Social Scale is Changing
Inequalities come in multiples. Far from being limited solely to revenue, they concern a set of situations whose total effect significantly differentiates the living standards of various groups in the population.
This is why CREDOC (The Research Centre for the Study and Observation of Living Conditions) has constructed a composite indicator taking into account seventeen significant variables in the life situations of the French: income but also household goods, leisure and cultural activities, unemployment… Monitored for fifteen years, this indicator of inequalities permits the study of the distribution of the principal characteristics of material comfort and how it has evolved since 1990.
The general improvement in the standard of living which has occurred in the last fifteen years has been accompanied by growth in inequalities and a modification of the group composition from the bottom to the top of the social scale. CREDOC’s study shows a growth in the feeling of vulnerability. This overall evolution does not preclude the possibility that inequalities correspond to ways of “thinking about the world” which are very different between the haves and haves not.