"Yellow Vest" ? The Majority of French People Are Among the Richest 10% in the World

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Gilets jaunes empêchés de rejoindre la place de la République et attendant d'être débloqués de la place de la Bastille par les forces de l'ordre. 26 janvier 2019.. By Thomon - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0. via Wiki Commons.

By Speranta Dumitru, Associate Professor, Paris Descartes University. First published on The Conversation

In France, the concern for inequality makes poverty invisible. For example, the organization Oxfam, whose name is related to the famine ( Ox ford Committee for Fam ine Relief), focused his campaign on the rich. The media gave the names of billionaires who would own as much as half of humanity but did not say a word about the poor. Yet, naming poor people increases their sympathy for them and promotes altruistic decision, as many studiesshow.

The invisibility of the poor could be explained by the current context. After long months of saying that yellow jackets "suffer", that they are "in distress" and can not "make ends meet" or "fill their fridge", can we still talk about those who live on $ 1.90 a day?

There is certainly good news: the proportion of the world's poor has fallen drastically. Forty years ago, it was over 40%. Today, only 10% of the world's population lives on $ 1.90 a day. Half of these people live in Africa.

So, imagine that you have 100 euros to give. You can give them to Christian, one of my students, born in Burkina Faso: he will send them to his family who live with $ 1.90 a day, as nearly half of Burkinabe. But you can also give them to Eric, father and driver, who earns a little more than 54 euros per day, the value of the daily smic.

How are you going to spend those 100 euros?

The national preference

Like most French people, you are tempted to give Eric the money. Admittedly, you know that 100 euros are worth a lot more for Christian. And you know that with the same money, you would help more people because family solidarity is more widespread in Africa. But something bristles you in this reasoning.

The temptation to favor his relatives and, by extension, his compatriots, is quite natural. In his Theory of Moral Sentiments , Adam Smith noted that any European of humanity would deplore an earthquake that touches a distant country. But despite the intensity of the disaster and the millions of inhabitants concerned, his personal belongings seem to him more important.

Now this attention to ourselves and to our surroundings perverts our moral sense. With the emotions that play tricks on us, we lose, as this European of whom Adam Smith speaks, any sense of the measure:

"If he were to lose his little finger, he would not sleep at night; but he would snore with the deepest sense of security in spite of the ruin of a hundred million of his brothers, provided he had never seen them. "

To avoid being trapped by our inclinations, John Rawls has found a solution. He called it "veil of ignorance". His idea is that it is not enough to want to be impartial (because our inclinations can take over). In terms of social justice, we must rather reason as if we did not know what social position would be ours. Basically, we could have been born in a rich or poor family. Our birth is more a matter of luck than merit.

This changes the problem a bit: imagine that you no longer have to give 100 euros but to receive them. But tomorrow morning, the birth lottery will be played again and you will wake up either in Christian's life or in Eric's life. You do not know how luck will turn, but you will have to live this life, drawn by lot, to the end - whether in France or Burkina Faso. In the meantime, tonight, we ask you where to send the 100 euros, in France or Burkina Faso?

Thousands of yellow vests (Gilets Jaunes) protests in Paris calling for lower fuel taxes, reintroduction of the solidarity tax on wealth, a minimum wage increase, and Emmanuel Macron's resignation as President of France, 09 February 2019. By Norbu Gyachung, CC BY-SA 4.0. via Wiki Commons.

Is living in France a chance?

Many people think that living in France is not really a chance when you are part of the working class.

The economist Branko Milanovic is the first to have estimated the extent of inequality of opportunity globally. He analyzed household disposable income in 118 countries. For each country, it divided the population into 100 shares and recorded the income of each 1%, or percentile. In total, he had 11800 centiles. But he wanted to know if the poorest 1% in Brazil, for example, are richer than the poorest 1% in India. To be able to compare these incomes, he converted them using purchasing power parity (PPP). Then, he reordered them by percentiles around the world.

For France, data from the World Bank show that 62% of French people belong to the richest 10% of the world.

But public opinion is interested in the very rich. In the graph below, each point represents 1% of the French with its rank in the national (on the horizontal axis) and the global (on the vertical axis) income distribution. On the right of the graph, we see that the richest 3% of the French are among the richest 1% in the world. In the United States, 12% belong to this category.

If public opinion is more interested in the poor French, it would look, for example, the first point on the left: it is the poorest 1%. She would be surprised then that despite their position, rather away from the rest of the national distribution, nobody cares. With their close proximity to the global distribution community, their buying power resembles that of the world's middle class , most of whom live in China.

Position of each French percentile in the global income distribution.

Above the 3% poorest in France, the situation is improving rapidly, so that 97% of the French belong to the 30% richest in the world. Then, 90% of the French are among the richest 20% in the world.

Therefore, if the lottery has awarded you the life of Eric in France, you are literally lucky. Because, whatever your personal efforts, the country where you are born determines your income prospects. Branko Milanovic estimated that place of birth accounts for 80% of global inequalities . His book, Global Inequalities , has just been translated into French.

At such a level of inequality of opportunity, one can not hesitate between Eric and Christian. Christian's family will almost certainly live on less than $ 5.50 a day, like 92% of Burkinabes . For Eric's child, the probability of having such income is 0.2% in France.

These comparisons take into account prices in each country, as indicated by the term "purchasing power parity". If the purchasing power of yellow vests justifies anger, how to call the feeling that the Burkinabés smother?

How to reduce inequality of opportunity?

Two solutions are often discussed in the public debate: the opening of the labor market to foreigners and redistribution.

Milanovic defends the first solution: to increase labor migration. This is the classic solution in development economics. Lant Pritchett , Harvard professor, has dedicated a book to him, Let Their People Come , which he left in free access. My study, "Visas, not help! " , Provides an overview of these issues.

Milanovic is aware of the rise of the extreme right and proposes a compromise: increase the number of economic migrants in exchange for the reduction of their rights. For example, they could pay more taxes. But my students who read his book and are not migrants have deemed this proposal of discrimination repugnant. Their reaction suggests that a compromise between the extreme right that no longer wants migrants and young French, committed to equal treatment on the territory, is not easy to find.

Another solution: the massive redistribution of income. Oxfam, like many others on the left, consider that the rich should be taxed more. But now the tax is collected nationwide and most billionaires live in rich countries. Taxing the rich more in rich countries is obviously not a solution for Africa.

Moreover, public opinion considers any tax exile as illegitimate, as if only their compatriots were entitled to benefit from the tax collected on these billionaires. At no time does one wonder whether the exile of the rich benefits the poor.

For the moment, the two solutions envisaged to reduce the inequality of chances lead to dead ends. On the one hand, the Milanovic compromise is difficult to obtain in a context of strong polarization of opinion. On the other hand, public opinion cares more about taking to the rich than improving the lives of the poor.

As for Emmanuel Macron, his solution is to promote access to the French labor market. Thus, the measures proposed in the crisis of yellow vests encourage work: increase of 100 euros for those who work for 0.5-1.5 of the smic and tax exemption of extra hours of work. It is clear that these measures will increase the inequality of opportunity at the global level.

While waiting for better times, we will have to redouble our efforts. We are more than half of the French to be part of the 10% richest in the world. Our efforts should be aimed at helping the poorest and the associations that fight poverty effectively.

School Spankings Are Banned Just About Everywhere Around The World Except In US

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In 19 States, It's Still Legal to Spank Children in Public Schools via NY Times. Image Mark Graham for The New York Times

In 1970, only three countries – Italy, Japan and Mauritius – banned corporal punishment in schools. By 2016, more than 100 countries banned the practice, which allows teachers to legally hit, paddle or spank students for misbehavior.

The dramatic increase in bans on corporal punishment in schools is documented in an analysis that we conducted recently to learn more about the forces behind the trend. The analysis is available as a working paper.

In order to figure out what circumstances led to bans, we looked at a variety of political, legal, demographic, religious and economic factors. Two factors stood out from the rest.

First, countries with English legal origin – that is, the United Kingdom as well as its former colonies that implemented British common law – were less likely to ban corporal punishment in schools across this time period.

Second, countries with higher levels of female political empowerment, as measured by things such as women’s political participation or property rights – that is, women having the right to sell, buy and own property – were more likely to ban corporal punishment.

Other factors, such as form of government, level of economic development, religious adherence and population size, appear to play a much less significant role, if at all.

We are experts in education policy, international policy and law. In order to conduct our analysis, we constructed a dataset of 192 countries over 47 years using country reports from the Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children and the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child. Then we matched it to data from the Quality of Government Institute.

It is true that the trend of banning corporal punishment in schools aligns with the passage of the 1990 U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child – a treaty now ratified by all countries except the United States. The treaty requires nations to “take all appropriate measures to ensure that school discipline is administered in a manner consistent with the child’s human dignity.” However, as our analysis reveals, it wasn’t the treaty alone that spurred the bans.

Global shifts in corporal punishment norms

Worldwide, 732 million children attend schools where corporal punishment is allowed.

Social norms surrounding this issue have shifted over time from viewing corporal punishment as an appropriate disciplinary method to viewing corporal punishment as less acceptable. In the last several decades, for instance, experts have found that corporal punishment is harmful to children socially, cognitively and emotionally.

Consequently, many countries have adopted new laws banning corporal punishment in schools. South America and Europe have made the most progress toward outlawing corporal punishment in schools. Africa and Asia have had more mixed results. There are no bans against corporal punishment in schools in the United States, India and Australia. In the United States, corporal punishment in public schools is legal in 19 states. It is also legal at private schools in 48 states.

While we found that countries with English common law systems were less likely to ban corporal punishment in schools, the reason why requires a closer look.

Common law countries abide by the principle of stare decisis – that is, the idea that similar cases should be decided upon similarly and should rely upon precedent. This means in practice that policies on a given issue are slower to change and become somewhat “locked in” because court cases and appeals take significant time.

Conversely, countries that are based primarily in civil code are often able to change the laws mostly through legislation, which often can be nimbler and swifter. Of course, some nations, like the United States, change laws through both methods.

Our analysis found that the proportion of countries with bans increased steadily after the passage of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990. We also found that not a single country with English legal origin banned corporal punishment in schools prior to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Even among countries that ratified the convention, those with English legal origin were 38% less likely to adopt a ban.

Female political empowerment and corporal punishment bans

The degree of female political empowerment in a country is also strongly associated with how likely the country is to ban corporal punishment in schools. Why is this the case?

One possible explanation is that women in general show lower support for the use of corporal punishment. Women also more generally prefer compassionate policies over violence. And finally, female political empowerment can reflect the progressiveness of society itself, given the clear links between women’s rights and human development. Societies in which women have greater rights tend to have more progressive policies in other domains as well, such as environmental protection.

The future of corporal punishment in schools

In sum, it appears that international agreements such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child might nudge some countries to make progress on specific human rights issues – in this case, the right for children not to be physically punished in schools. Yet, the ratification of an international treaty has limited influence, it seems, in comparison to a country’s legal structure and the level of its female political participation.

The U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled the practice of corporal punishment in schools unconstitutional. In fact, it issued a decision in 1977 that noted both the historical traditionof corporal punishment in U.S. schools, and the common-law principle that corporal punishment is permissible as long as it’s “reasonable but not excessive.”