Christian Baudelot has shown that the inequalities currently affecting French society are cumulative and constitute a system. These inequalities even affect non-market behavior. For example, contrary to what Durkheim had shown at the end of the 19th century, suicide is particularly prevalent among the poorest, whose life expectancy is already the lowest. Similarly, inequalities in the face of death are on the increase: there are huge inequalities in life expectancy between rich and poor, and at the same age, the poor are more affected than the upper classes by cancer and cardiovascular disease.
Whereas in the past, wealth, income and gender were the main dividing lines in inequality, today, as C. Baudelot, age, ethnic origin and housing. Young people, who were privileged during the Thirty Glorious Years by the principle of increasing salaries, have paid the heaviest price for the transformations in the labor market: a poverty rate of 20%, but also a high suicide rate - which marks a major break with the past, when this rate increased with age. Expenditure on housing is also showing an inversion of the curve: a sign of considerable upheaval, this item is now the leading expense in all budgets, ahead of food. In addition, age inequalities in housing are much more pronounced, reducing young people's chances of owning their own home. What's more, the French school system, which was supposed to correct inherited inequalities, today appears to be one of the most socially unequal: the French school system is both inefficient and unfair. It presents itself as a system of open competition, but is in fact a system of institutional and family sponsorship.
In the discussion, Pierre Rosanvallon and Christian Baudelot expressed surprise that the extent of current inequalities should give rise to moral criticism, but not to a reflection on equality. Similarly, why is it that, despite better knowledge of inequalities, the failure to implement corrective policies is not perceived as unacceptable? The discussion also provided an opportunity to revisit the French choice of training the elite rather than the masses - yet PISA surveys show that the best-performing education systems are those in which the gaps between the weakest and the strongest are minimal.
Christian Baudelot is Professor of Sociology in the Social Sciences Department at ENS-Ulm. With Roger Establet, he has published L'élitisme républicain (Le Seuil, 2009) and Suicide. L'envers de notre monde (Le Seuil, 2006).
