FARM POVERTY IN FRANCE DURING THE 1980S

Was poverty, more specifically relative poverty, still widespread during the 1980s in French agriculture, i.e. within the context of an affluent society? Even though important structural changes were taking place, there were still factors at work tending to result in the impoverishment of agricultural households. Evidence of the persistence of agricultural poverty was difficult to establish because of methodological and conceptual issues and because of the non-reliability of much statistical data. The income approach used proved to be inconclusive. Nevertheless, two symptoms of deprivation were found to exist. They prove that, despite the fact that agricultural households may own wealth, they are subject to social marginalization. For many agricultural households, their levels of consumption were much lower than for non-farm households and many women still refused to marry farmers of small or medium-sized holdings. This agricultural poverty has neither the same form nor the same intensity as non-agricultural poverty.