Minus 12% in 2019: the number of files submitted to over-indebtedness commissions in France recorded a sharp decline in 2019, according to a new study published this Thursday by the Banque de France. A phenomenon that strikes mainly women and very modest households.
Since 2014, the rate has dropped 38%. In total, “143,080 situations were submitted to the secretariats of the debt relief commissions of mainland France, of which just over 94% were considered admissible,” said the Banque de France in its annual report on the subject.
A decline in primo-deposits started in 2012 and accentuated from 2015 📉. In 2019: 81,000 files registered in 2019, a number far below the 1990 level.
Find the typological survey on #overindebtedness of households 📝👉 https://t.co/u3pGoPPQiy pic.twitter.com/LHDOGQWABH
Overexposed women
This overall figure includes 81,000 new situations of over-indebtedness. This number of “primo-deposits”, down 8% over one year, is far below their 1990 level, the date when the fight against this phenomenon “really started” in France, adds the Banque de France. The primo-deposits "provide the real trend in terms of over-indebtedness," says the monetary institution.
Among the highlights of this study, over-indebted people are often isolated and in difficult social and financial situations. In particular, women remain very exposed to over-indebtedness: "receiving income generally lower than that of men, and four times more often the head of a single-parent family, women represent 55% of debtors and co-debtors" in the age groups most concerned, details the study.
Six billion euros in debt
This is reinforced by the fact that "many of these overindebted single parent families are probably of recent appearance, since the separation of a couple is one of the factors which accentuates the occurrence of overindebtedness", it is added. Slightly more than half (56%) of over-indebted people live in households whose standard of living is below the poverty line, which represent a total of 14% of French residents. In total, the overall debt of over-indebted households reached a little more than six billion euros at the end of 2019, three-quarters of which is financial debt (consumer credit or mortgage, for example).
With changes in legislation in recent years, such as the "Lagarde" law of 2010, which strongly regulated consumer credit, "the share of consumer debt has decreased by more than 25 percentage points, from three quarters to half of the total, while that of real estate debt more than doubled, going from 22% to 48% of the outstanding.
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- Economy
- Bank of France
- Debt
- indebtedness