Alain Bihr & Roland Pfefferkorn
Déchiffrer les inégalités (Investigating Inequalities)
Paris, Syros, 1999 (First Edition: 1995)
Contents
Introduction 11
Chapter 1
Inequalities on the Labour Market 23
Unemployment, Precarious Job, Underemployment: an Appraisal 24
Inequalities & Unemployment 27
Inequalities & Job Precariousness 32
Inequalities & Underemployment 38
Chapter 2
Inequalities in Sources of Primary Income 43
Wages 44
Professions’ Earnings 50
Property Income 54
The Economic Crisis: Losers and Winners 58
Chapter 3
Inequalities and Social Levies 63
Direct Taxation 65
Indirect Taxation 76
Social Contributions 78
Social Levies: Progressive or Regressivewith Income Level? 81
Chapter 4
Inequalities in Social Security Benefits 87
Methodological Issues 89
Contributory Benefits 91
Child Benefits, Family Allowances 93
Minimum Income Support 108
Chapter 5
Inequalities in Disposable Income 121
Redistribution: Effective but Limited 122
Inequalities in Living Standards Between Social Classes 125
Being Poor in France Today 134
Being Wealthy in France Today 149
Chapter 6
Inequalities in Consumption 157
Disparities in Consumption Levels & Structures 158
Impact of the Standard of Living 162
Impact of the Standard of Consumption 166
Chapter 7
Inequalities in Asset Distribution 173
Unequal Amounts 175
Inequalities in Asset Structure 181
Inequalities in Inheritance 186
Upper-Income Groups 190
Chapter 8
Inequalities in Housing 195
People without Access to Housing Benefit 196
Lease-holder or Tenant? 205
Housing Quality 213
Spatial and Temporal Inequalities 219
Chapter 9
Inequalities in Health 229
Social Inequalities regarding Morbidity and Mortality 230
Health in the Workplace 238
Unequal Access to Health Care 249
Chapter 10
Inequalities in Education 255
Diversity in Educational Trajectories & Achievement 258
Diplomas and Entry into the Workforce 274 An Educational System which Reinforces Social Inequalities 280
Chapter 11
Inequalities in Time Budget 289
Daily Constraints & Leisure Time 290
Inequalities in Leisure Time 295
Vacation 317
Chapter 12
Inequalities in Public Life 323
Participation in Not-for-Profit Associations & Unions 324
Participation in Political Life 330
Inequalities & Media 344
Inequalities & French Courts & Criminal law 346
Chapter 13
A Systemic View of Inequalities 355
A System of Interactions 356
Cumulative Inequalities 362
Reproduction of Inequalities 373
Conclusion: Reducing Inequalities 391
Appendix 399
List of Charts 410
Conference Summary
Monday, 20 November 2000
The attendants of the first meeting were the following:
Pierre Concialdi, Economist, Research Director at the Institute of Social & Economic Research (IRES) located in Paris. He is currently conducting research on salaries & revenues.
Antoine Math, Economist, was a member of the Research Department at CNAF (the National Family Allowance Fund which is responsible for Family Policy in France) until 1998. He was recently a researcher at the DGV European Commission in Brussels; he recently joined IRES. His work has essentially focused on social protection, welfare and minimum income support.
Michel Pincon & Monique Pincon-Charlot, Sociologists, Research Directors at CNRS (National Centre for Scientific Research) have been conducting several studies on the sociology of upper classes and wealthy families in France.
Riccardo Bellofiore, Economist, University of Bergamo, Italy. His interests lay in globalisation & post-Fordism. He has coordinated research in the area of labour market & labour organisation.
Vittorio Rieser, Economist & Sociologist, Member of IRES (Torino), interested in labour organisation & social inequalities.
Jeanne Fagnani, Sociologist, Research Director at CNRS (MATISSE-University of Paris 1) and Research Advisor at CNAF where she has conducted research into social transfers (particularly Child Benefit) and family policies in Europe.
Bernard Friot, Economist, Professor at Nancy-II University and researcher at GREE-CNRS, has been focusing primarily on social protection as well as on the wage system and Welfare.
Jean-Pascal Higele, currently preparing a PhD at GREE on a comparative study in France and UK on the benefits provided to the unemployed.
And finally Alain Bihr, Sociologist at the University of Haute-Alsace, and Roland Pfefferkorn, Sociologist at the University Marc-Bloch located in Strasbourg. Together they have conducted a research on social inequalities and gender which could provide a theoretical background to this current project.
Francis Kern, Economist, Dean of the School of Economics and Management at Louis-Pasteur University in Strasbourg as well as Pascal Politanski, Political Scientist and Professor at UFM of Strasbourg also attended the meeting as observers.
As a result of the discussions during this meeting, the following four points of agreement were identified:
1. The first objective of this project will be to establish the state of the art concerning researches and debates on social inequalities within EU countries. A conference to be convened in Strasbourg in the spring of 2002 is planned to finalise this objective.
2. In the first phase, it seems preferable to limit the scope of this study to a limited number of countries. The participants chose the following countries: Germany, Spain, France, Italy, United Kingdom, and Sweden.
3. It seems also preferable to restrict the scope of the study to a limited number of dimensions in the field of research on inequalities. The choices of participants were the following:
- Four sectors: inequalities in the workforce, inequalities regarding income and salaries, inequalities regarding social protection, and lastly inequalities in education.
- Two cross-sectional aspects: one focused on the dominant social group (the bourgeoisie); the other focused on analyses of the debates (political and theoretical) that rose up from the concept of inequality in each of the aforementioned countries.
4. Participants have then committed themselves to contact various research institutions that could be interested in similar workeither to propose them to collaborate in this project or to suggest names of colleagues who might be interested.
During the next meeting in Spring 2001, the participants will report on their different contacts. The group will welcome the new teams and individuals who will join and will start preparing the organisation of the conference to be held in Spring 2002.
Social inequalities in Europe
Research Proposal MISHA
February 2001
The aim of this paper is to briefly present a research project which would address issues related to social inequalities in Europe. This research would be co-ordinated by people currently working in the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme d’Alsace (MISHA), a public research institution. Therefore, we are looking for academic teams or researchers who would be interested in collaborating with us on this project.
We would like to investigate social inequalities on the wider European level than France alone (see Contents of our book Déchiffer les inégalités dealing with these issues in our country). We are of course aware of the immediate difficulties inherent in such a project and are therefore willing to make modifications to the original intentions from which this project was inspired.
- In the first place, it will be necessary to limit the field of our investigation to a small number of European Union member states. This does not mean that we are abandoning our eventual desire to cover all the member states of the EU. However our initial investigation will concentrate on the following countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
- Secondly, it is our strong desire to cover a wide range of social inequalities: inequalities between social categories, gender inequalities, age inequalities, inequalities between citizens and foreigners, and finally, spatio-temporal inequalities (between regions, cities and countryside, large metropolitan areas and small towns, city centres and suburbs). Here again, during the first stage, we must limit ourselves to selecting one or two dimensions for further study, most likely the first two we have mentioned (see Conference summary).
- Thirdly, we propose our initial focus would be on those inequalities for which there is established statistical data, which could be drawn from the public administrations of the various member states (or European community institutions), or, alternatively, from university institutions lato sensu. This should not however prevent us from taking into account alternative approaches including investigations currently developing within the scientific community.
Obviously we can not use statistical data as the primary instrument of investigation without also reflecting on the practical limits and utilisation of statistical analysis itself.. This comparative approach will undoubtedly raise the problem of homogeneity in the statistical data collected in each of the selected countries. We would also have to take into account the institutional and cultural context in which these data have been elaborated.
- Fourthly, as far as organisation is concerned, we propose that a team of limited size, based at MISHA, would oversee the interaction and co-ordination of work made by different national working teams. This would allow every researcher, laboratory, or institute interested in the project to more readily be involved. It is hoped that such a team could ensure that similar activities, within the countries that have joined our field of study, would grow in parallel to our own and from there spread outward. Moreover it is hoped that each team would be multidisciplinary.
Once the teams are put into place we propose to organise in Strasbourg, under the aegis of MISHA, for the Spring of 2002, a conference which would mark the public commencement of this project to conduct state of the art research into social inequality.
We hope that this presentation, although still in need of some elaboration, will grab your attention. This project, as currently presented, is by no means definitive. Please feel free to add any remarks, comments and critiques, as well as contributing suggestions and proposals for modification.
We look forward to receiving your reactions and we hope that you will be interested in a collaboration with us. Your replies will permit us to schedule a date for a new gathering of interested parties, which could occur in Spring 2001, in Strasbourg.
Alain Bihr & Roland Pfefferkorn
Respectively Maître de conférence in Sociology at the University of Haute-Alsace, Laboratoire d’Intelligence des Organisations, Mulhouseand Professeur agrégé de sciences sociales at the University Marc-Bloch, Sociological Laboratory Cultures et sociétés en Europe, UPRESA 7043, Strasbourg, France.