Tuesday, January 01, 2013

French Youth Poverty Rate Reaches 23%

While the French attack capitalism and America's way of life as being nightmarish — as compared to Europe's (oh-so-) compassionate economy and (oh-so-) generous society — the rate of French youth living in poverty has reached… 23%.
The diagnosis is critical.
That is Le Monde's interpretation given to the conclusion in the latest French report on the nation's youth.

Articles by Pascale Krémer and Catherine Rollot along with an interview of sociologist Olivier Galland, and filling the entire second and third pages of the French daily of reference along with the top four fifths' width of the front page, point out that "the young are the primary victims of the recession." And because "all youth do not suffer the recession as violently as their neighbors", the government's December report points out that the fracture is increasing between two castes of youth growing ever further apart.
Car les jeunes sont bien les premières victimes de la récession. Tous ne la subissent pas aussi violemment. Plutôt que le portrait d'une génération sacrifiée, ce rapport dessine la ligne de fracture entre deux jeunesses qui s'éloignent l'une de l'autre.
La première est dotée de diplômes, ils continuent bon gré mal gré de la protéger. La seconde en est dépourvue, elle est guettée par la pauvreté. Ce sont ces 15 % de jeunes qui ne sont ni en études, ni en formation, ni en emploi. Nulle part. Et que la puissance publique aide peu. Le taux de pauvreté des 18-24 ans atteint 22,5 %. Depuis 2004, il a progressé de 5 points. Au total, plus d'un million de jeunes sont désormais confrontés à une situation de grande précarité.
That's right: it's something we see over and over again: it turns out that — oui, even in Europe's compassionate© and generous™ societies — it is the rich who come out well and the poor who turn out not to be getting any aid (probably because, as usual, the poor are the ones paying for the rich).

Meanwhile, continues Pascal Kremer, 15% of people 15 to 29 are NEET (Neither in Employment   nor in Education and Training). Indeed, Pierre Cahuc, the author of The Pigeonholing Machine: How France Splits Its Youth in Two, tells Jean-Baptiste Chastand and Claire Guélaud that "we [French] have just about a million young people without a diploma and out of work, [and] half of those have stopped looking."
… on a quasiment un million de jeunes sans diplôme et sans emploi, et leur accès au travail est extrêmement compliqué. La moitié d'entre eux ne recherchent même plus un emploi... Ces jeunes sont dans une situation dramatique en France.