One in two people experience difficulty living with dignity, according to a barometer

One in two people say they encounter difficulties living with dignity, according to a barometer published Wednesday by the organizations united in the Power to Live Pact, which also reveals the feeling of almost all French people of living in a conflictual society. This barometer of the Power of Living Pact and the Jean Jaurès Foundation, which aims to fuel the debate for the presidential election, is based on an Ipsos BVA survey carried out among 12,000 people representative of the French population. Established in 2019, in the wake of the yellow vest movement, the Power of Living Pact brings together more than 60 organizations - the CFDT, the Foundation for Housing the Disadvantaged, the Climate Action Network, etc. -, to provide responses to social and environmental issues.

This barometer highlights the feeling of fragility felt by a “considerable” part of the population, in the words of Amandine Lebreton, director of the Power of Living Pact, well beyond the 15.4% of the population living below the poverty line. One in two respondents say they have difficulty getting by with their household resources and encounter difficulties in living with dignity. The same proportion indicates that they have given up buying quality food over the last six months for financial reasons and 59% of them fear that energy costs will negatively affect their standard of living in the coming years. Young people express greater concern than their elders about the impact of their housing expenses.

“A feeling of personal decline”

“There is a feeling of personal decline in the country, for oneself or one's home,” warned Jérémie Peltier, co-director of the Jean Jaurès foundation, referring to “lives shrunken” in particular by the cost of fuel. The barometer also reveals the extent of loneliness: 35% of respondents say they have no one or almost no one to count on in the event of a hard blow, highlighting the importance of collective solidarity, according to the sponsors. Almost all French people (95%) also believe that they live in a conflictual society, with 59% of them seeing insecurity and incivility as the primary cause of tension, and 42% seeing inequalities.

For members of Power to Live, these observations call for political responses. Their main objective is “to have influence in the presidential campaign and to prevent the extreme right from coming to power”, underlined the general secretary of the CFDT, Maryline Léon. Faced with the current mobilization of young people, worried about their future, the spokesperson for the Power of Living Pact Christophe Robert said he had “the feeling of an immense waste seeing the blindness of the government and sometimes the harshness of the responses”.