Improving life in France's lower-income neighbourhoods

摘要

While overall poverty is relatively low in France, it can be highly concentrated at the neighbourhood level. In some cases, 40% of households in such neighbourhoods are below the relative poverty line. Unemployment is high, children struggle in school, housing and urban infrastructure is run down, and there is a lack of local employers, public and private services, and amenities. The French government deploys special education, employment, business and safety measures in these areas. There are also policies to promote social mixing: municipalities in areas of tension must devote at least 25% of housing to social housing or face fines. The Programme National pour la Renovation Urbaine is a large-scale urban renovation programme that aims to attract residents from wealthier areas to lower-income neighbourhoods where dilapidated social housing estates have been replaced with smaller units mixing social, private rental and owner-occupied housing. Such policies are based on the idea that high geographical concentrations of poverty reinforce and reproduce economic and social disadvantage. Indeed, in the United States, children who move away from neighbourhoods with a high concentration of poverty are found to attain higher levels of education and earnings than their peers who stayed behind.