According to the Banque de France, the French have accumulated an unprecedented savings surplus of 170 billion euros during the crisis.
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The Covid-19 crisis has, as we suspected, not made it possible to reduce inequalities. A study published on Tuesday March 22 by the Economic Analysis Council (CAE) confirms this: where the most modest households have almost spent the surplus savings they had been able to accumulate during the health crisis, the wealthiest continue to accumulate additional savings.
To draw its conclusions, the CAE analyzed a sample of anonymised household banking data from the Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale network. It shows that the 20% of the poorest households “would have almost completely consumed the additional savings that were generated during the health crisis”indicates the body composed of economists responsible for advising the government.
Furthermore, if there is still an overall increase in savings, “from September 2021, (it) begins to decrease” for all categories of households, “except” from Top 10% “for which it seems to be stabilizing”. The analysis of household bank accounts further shows that since March 2021, the wealthiest 10% have above all seen an increase in deposits in their securities accounts (which allow them to invest in the stock market), which could be explained by the good health of stock market indices after their fall in early 2020.
From March 2020, the first restrictive measures to deal with the health crisis led to a sharp drop in household consumption, while the incomes of most of them were maintained thanks to public support measures, such as partial unemployment or the solidarity fund for the self-employed. According to the Banque de France, they have thus accumulated an unprecedented savings surplus of 170 billion euros.
While household consumption is the main driver of French growth, economists are carefully scrutinizing the level of household savings, and at what rate they will spend this additional savings.