French households’ purchasing power: Reality and perceptions

In surveys, many French people say that their purchasing power has declined (in the CSA survey of September 2021, 50% of respondents said that their purchasing power had declined over the past 10 years; the figure is 65% for the lowest-income earners). Yet official figures show that real household incomes have grown . What accounts for this contradiction? We look at the share of household income that is spent on housing, telecommunications and energy, as well as the evolution of household purchasing power stripping out these costs. We see that if one excludes this non-discretionary spending ( on housing, energy, telecommunications), household consumption in volume terms has grown more or less at the same rate as total consumption in volume terms and the purchasing power of disposable income. Household purchasing power has increased, even taking into account non-discretionary spending.