A 2017 report by Raul Zambrano [1] discussing data from the World Wealth and Income Inequality database, has compared the income of different social strata (fraction of all income) for the US with that of France over a 45-year time- span (see the diagrams below).

Note the steep U.S. decline over 45 years and the post 2012 situation with the bottom 50% stagnating – hovering at around 10% of all income. While the top 1% have steadily increased and are at now at the pre-2008 global crisis level.

However little variation seems to exist in the French data when we look at the income trends for the two groups. The top 1% has had less than a 10% share of total national income in the period under consideration. And the bottom 50% have indeed been slowing gaining since 1985, ignoring the dip due to the global crisis. The overall contrast with

U.S. income inequality is indeed stark.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why France is the land of “liberté, égalité et fraternité“.

1. Source: Raul Zambrano, 15 March 2017 “Wealth and income inequality data”. https://blog.raulza.me/wealth-and-income- inequality-data/