At first glance, the assertion seems to go against all the certainties acquired on the subject. A study by the Jean Jaurès Foundation published on Thursday indicates that the Covid-19 epidemic has not been favored, in France, by the level of poverty.
“There is no relationship between the even modest progression of the epidemic in space and the degree of urbanization, the level of poverty, the proportion of elderly people and the proportion of immigrants from the Maghreb and Turkey ", She decides.
Contrary to what one might suppose, this analysis does not collide with previous data which clearly showed that the poorest populations are the most vulnerable to the epidemic.
What is the purpose of the study?
The whole study starts from a presupposition of the author of the study. After recalling these famous links between the virus and the standard of living, the historian and demographer Hervé Le Bras believes that "we often slip", from "this observation", to "the idea that poverty" would facilitate “The progression of the epidemic and even the creation of clusters. "
The emeritus researcher therefore endeavors to demonstrate that demographic and social factors do not influence the spread of the virus throughout France. For this, the one who had already tried to correlate the nationalist vote to the distance from the stations superimposes the card of deaths linked to the Covid-19 on other cards.
In particular, the poverty rate, the percentage of foreigners from the Maghreb and Turkey, but also the density or the age of the population are tested. Finding no causal link, he concluded that it would be "futile to seek the source of the epidemic in the usual factors studied in the social sciences".
What do we know about the links between Covid-19 and poverty?
Some will argue that studies consistently show that the level of wealth does have an impact on the consequences of Covid-19. Chance of the calendar, the Guardian confirms this Friday that the British in the poorest areas of England and Wales are twice as likely to die from coronavirus.
This trend, already attested in two separate studies published in early May, is also very marked in the United States. In France, Seine-Saint-Denis, which is home to a large number of demographic and social difficulties, has often posted higher mortality rates than other Ile-de-France departments.
Why these two aspects do not contradict each other
It is important to note the difference between the reasons for the appearance of the virus and its effects, once it is implanted somewhere. "Social causes play absolutely not in the spread of the epidemic, but rather in its consequences", summarizes Hervé Le Bras on LCI.
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For the demographer, the wave of contagion comes first from "the importance of the initial clusters". "Once the epidemic has set in, it seems to be very selective," he concedes. Which makes him write, in his text, that the social situation "only intervenes in the second rank".
This social inequality in the face of the virus is explained by several factors. It is commonly accepted that the trades, among the most impoverished populations, are more exposed to the risk of contagion, with the impossibility of using telework, in particular.
The concentration of people within the same household probably aggravates this disparity, as well as certain recurrent illnesses in the less well-off populations, linked for example to malnutrition. Vulnerability factors unrelated, as this study shows, to the geography of the epidemic.