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Economy: has France fallen behind economically compared to the United States?
Economy: has France fallen behind economically compared to the United States?
(franceinfo)
During the debate between him and the Prime Minister, Jordan Bardella assured that the economic level of France was comparable to Mississippi, the poorest of the American states. True or false ?
A shocking statement. “Today we have the GDP per capita of the poorest American state, that is, Mississippi”, compared Jordan Bardella, head of the National Rally list in the European elections, during the debate against Gabriel Attal. This comparison seems astonishing and yet it is true. France and the state of Mississippi now have equivalent GDP per capita, a finding that was false 30 years earlier. This statistic raises a more global question: has France fallen behind economically compared to the United States?
The GDP per capita indicator at purchasing power parity makes it possible to compare the real wealth of populations. At the beginning of the 2000s, France, despite a lower GDP per capita, followed the same dynamic as the United States. The shift took place after 2008, the date of the subprime crisis. The United States then had a GDP per capita $12,000 higher than that of France. But this difference became more pronounced with a better economic recovery across the Atlantic after the crisis and this situation was reproduced after the global pandemic.
In 2022, the gap between French and American GDP per capita was almost $20,000. A gap which can be explained by extremely significant recovery plans from the American state after each crisis. In 2008, Obama implemented a plan worth more than $700 billion. Donald Trump and Joe Biden continued to reinject money into the American economic system after Covid.
However, these US recovery plans, which certainly boost the economy, have also widened the deficits. The public debt is much higher in the United States than in France, which must respect European treaties, where the budget deficit must be less than 3% of GDP. The wealth gap between an American and a French person has widened significantly over the last 20 years, due to violent economic crises from which the United States has emerged better than France.
GDP per capita France
GDP per capita France (purchasing power parity)
Christophe Blot, deputy director of the analysis and forecasting department at the OFCE, in charge of the United States
Non-exhaustive list
