Publication Date:
2012-06-11
Description:
The Poverty Penalty in France: How the Market Makes Low-Income Populations Poorer As numerous studies have shown, poverty cannot be understood as a one-dimensional phenomenon, restricted to financial issues alone. Financial constraints remain, of course, a core concern for the poor, but these constraints are aggravated by another, perhaps even more unjust, form of pressure. Known as the “poverty penalty” or “double jeopardy”, it refers to the fact that the poor often pay more per unit of consumption than the non-poor. Or as one Washington Post journalist put it, provocatively: “You have to be rich to be poor” (Brown 2009). There are few studies that document in any detail the poverty penalty in rich countries. Indeed, as far as we are aware, no such study has ever been conducted in France. This paper sets out to change that. It is based on a study commissioned by the HEC professorial chair in Social Business and the action tank “Entreprise et Pauvreté”, conducted pro bono by a team f...
Electronic ISSN:
1867-8521
Topics:
Biology
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