“Rise in Incomes: A Decade of Change in French Regional Capitals”

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The proportion of households declaring very comfortable incomes has clearly increased in a decade in the French regional capitals.

By Erwan Seznec

Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Nantes, Marseilles and Toulouse. Point looked at the evolution of income declared in six regional capitals, between 2010 and 2020, as traced by open access data from the General Directorate of Public Finance.

First observation, the share of households in the last bracket of income tax, declaring therefore more than 100,000 euros per year, is rising sharply everywhere, from 60% to 90%. It sometimes progresses ten times faster than the population as a whole. 100,000 euros, i.e. a couple each of whose halves earns a little more than 4,000 euros net per month: these are not systematically large fortunes, but those who exceed the threshold that François Hollande mentioned in 2010 to define the “rich”. I…