France is “the world champion of debt . . . world champion of unemployment, the world champion of poverty”, Marine Le Pen told the Anglo-American Press Association of Paris last year. It was a ludicrously negative description of a high-income country. How would she categorise Chad? But the far-right leader knew that many voters would agree with her. French pessimism is her best shot at beating Emmanuel Macron in Sunday’s run-off for the presidency.
Why do three-quarters of French people tell pollsters their country is in decline? The cliché explanation is that the out-of-touch Paris elite has no idea how ordinary folk are suffering. This argument has many holes. First, happiness researchers long ago identified the “French paradox”: French people report lower levels of happiness than peers from equally wealthy countries. In short, French misery isn’t a straightforward economic story. Moreover, French individual happiness has been rising, albeit from a low base. Most people feel they personally are OK even as they imagine their country is going to the dogs.
And national indicators show that France still looks after its citizens: unemployment is at its lowest since 2008, government spending of 55.6 per cent of GDP was the highest in the developed world even before the pandemic, and French incomes remain relatively equal. Physical security has improved. The homicide rate halved between 1988 and 2019. To quote the writer Sylvain Tesson: “France is a paradise inhabited by people who think they’re in hell.”