At what income level are we rich? Delicate question, to which politicians are careful not to answer. But statistical organizations offer interesting figures.
The 2025 Finance Bill, commonly called “the budget”, agitates both the political class and public opinion. And in particular the proposal for a “surtax on high incomes”, which revives the eternal debate about who is “rich” and who is “poor” in France. The subject is both complex and sensitive, because wealth can be understood in several ways, through income or assets. And even if we only consider income, defining “objective” thresholds beyond which we are “rich” or “poor” is delicate.
An official poverty threshold does exist, set at 60% of the median level of the population in mainland France. The standard of living corresponds to the disposable income of a household, divided by the number of Consumption Units (CU) of the household. The first adult counts for 1 UC, other people over 14 years old for 0.5 UC each, and children under 14 years old for 0.3 UC each.
According to the 2024 edition of the report on household income and wealthvery recently published by INSEE, this median standard of living was, in mainland France, 2,028 euros per month in 2022. That is to say, half of the population had monthly incomes below this threshold. , once related to the composition of their household in terms of number of Consumption Units.
Thus, the poverty threshold for this period stood at 1,216 euros per month for a single person, and 2,554 euros per month for a couple with two children aged under 14. But what about the “wealth threshold”? INSEE does not calculate this indicator directly, because it simply does not offer a definition. But another organization does it: the Observatory of Inequalities.
This independent association therefore proposes to define the wealth threshold twice the median standard of living of the population. This definition is obviously arbitrary, but no more so than that of the poverty threshold (why 60%, and not 50 or 70% for example?), and we can obviously criticize it. But it at least offers the possibility of giving ourselves some benchmarks and orders of magnitude.
Based on the INSEE report cited above, the Observatory of Inequalities proposes a wealth threshold for different types of families. According to its calculations, a household is considered rich from the following monthly income: 4,056 euros for a single person, 6,084 euros for a couple without children, or 10,138 euros for a couple with two children under 14 years old.
For a single person, this threshold therefore represents an annual disposable income of €48,672 after taxes. Let’s add two pieces of information to put these numbers into perspective. On the one hand, only 10% of the population of mainland France exceeds this annual income threshold. On the other hand, the famous “surtax on high incomes” mentioned at the start of the article only concerns households whose income is greater than… 250,000 euros per year for a single person. That is more than five times more than the wealth threshold as defined by the Observatory of Inequalities. Suffice to say that this threshold only concerns people who could be described as “very rich”.