An economic decline that continues. In 2024, according to provisional data from INSEE, French GDP per capita will be below the average of that of the European Union, reports essayist Antoine Foucher in a column published in The Echoes. On average, he specifies, a French person is today less rich than a European.
This is the third consecutive year that the French standard of living has been below the European average. Countries that were previously comparable to us have since overtaken us. In 1975, French and West Germans lived on the same level. In 2000, the gap already reached 6%, despite the shock of reunification. In 2024, it exceeds 11%. The Danes, who lived 13% better than us in 1975, widened the gap to 19% in 2000, then to 23% today.
The Poles will soon have the same standard of living as the French
And those who were behind us catch up with us, sometimes at a forced march. The UK was 12% behind in 1975; it disappeared despite Brexit. Spain is slowly but surely closing the gap. As for Poland, it embodies a spectacular trajectory: 60% behind in 2000, only 20% in 2024. At this rate, French and Poles could display the same standard of living before the end of the next five-year term.
At issue, in particular: the training of our children. In 1999, France was ranked 13ᵉ rank in the PISA ranking; today she ranks 26ᵉ. Our assets are hardly better armed: France only arrives at the 26ᵉ place in the PIAAC ranking, which assesses the skills of adults. We work less over a lifetime than most of our European neighbors. And above all, we no longer compensate for this less work with higher productivity: we find ourselves at 14ᵉ world rank, against 7ᵉ in 2000.
To these weaknesses is now added a budgetary policy which risks aggravating the movement, underlines Antoine Foucher. The 2026 budgets of the State and Social Security reduce investment in education, cut training for young people, undermine pension reform and undermine programs for the future like France 2030. So many choices that jeopardize tomorrow’s productivity to relieve today’s constraints.
