SAlthough France maintains a rather low poverty rate among advanced countries, it has suffered an increase in precariousness in recent years. INSEE thus noted that the non-renewal of exceptional aid paid in 2020 during the health crisis weighed on the standard of living of the lowest-income households, which decreased in 2021. The poverty rate increased from 13.6% to 14.5%, and France is emerging from the crisis with a rate higher than the one it had when it entered it.
However, social benefits fight effectively against precariousness: without them, our poverty rate would be almost 8 points higher ! This for a modest cost: expenses linked to the payment of social minima represented 1.2% of gross domestic product in 2021. This is why we can regret that large gaps remain in the way in which aid voted in the budgets from the government and communities are paid.
It is thus estimated that only seven people out of ten benefit from active solidarity income (RSA), with the Court of Auditors attributing the causes of non-recourse to lack of information, the complexity of access conditions and management rules. , and social stigma. The management of research, studies and statistics (Datres) also underlines, in 2022, that between 25% and 42% of eligible employees do not use unemployment insurance, “a rate comparable to that observed on other social benefits”.
Beneficial investment
Inflation has not helped, and the fight against non-recourse can only become a priority: the deployment of “solidarity at source”, aimed at automating the completion of the declarations of resources of applicants and recipients of solidarity benefits, must be accelerated in 2024 – where, today, budgets are constructed in anticipation of this non-recourse.
We also start from the postulate that good social assistance is a beneficial investment for its recipient and for society, and that non-take-up conversely represents an under-investment. However, its implementation poses challenges to overcome to ensure success.
“Zero non-recourse territories” are already being set up to carry out an experiment in partnership with the CAF and associations fighting against poverty, and each must have a “local committee” (on the model of the Territoires project zero long-term unemployed) including key players, including people eligible for or benefiting from social rights covered by the zero non-recourse territories
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