Like a sad fate, the years go by and the profiles of over-indebted people are similar.
In 2023, the Banque de France, which publishes its annual report on the issue this Thursday, received 121,617 overindebtedness files, a figure up 8% compared to the previous year.
Among these files, nearly 42% were redeposits.
Geographically, we see that it is
“the same departments”
which stand out from year to year, according to Hélène Arveiller, deputy director of the personal branch at the Banque de France.
The northern departments, affected among other things by deindustrialization, almost all have more than 300 applications filed per 100,000 inhabitants.
Many departments in central France, such as Loiret and Cher, have a filing rate of between 250 and 300 files.
The West and South-East zones are more spared, with most departments having a submission rate of less than 250 files.
As of December 31, 2023, the number of people identified as over-indebted in mainland France stood at 586,000 in total, down compared to the end of 2022 (621,000).
Vulnerable people and victims of life accidents (divorce, death of a loved one, illness, etc.) are, unsurprisingly, over-represented.
Thus, 58% have a standard of living below the monetary poverty threshold (1158 euros per month per person).
Only 8% of over-indebted households have a standard of living greater than or equal to the median income of the entire population.
Furthermore, the majority (52%) of the resources of over-indebted people comes from earned income, but this rate is ten points lower than that of all households.
This gap is found in the proportion of over-indebted people who have paid employment (only 35% when it is 45% in the population).
Mechanically, the rate of their income coming from social minima (10%) is 3.5 times higher than that of all households.
Over-indebtedness cases also see an over-representation of separated, single or widowed people (56% compared to 41% in the population) and single-parent families (20%, twice as much as in the population as a whole).
In the vast majority of cases (90%), these over-indebted single-parent families are headed by women.
This fact largely explains the over-representation of women in all cases (54% compared to 52%).
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In 2023, the debt contracted by all over-indebted households amounts to 4.2 billion euros, an amount stable over one year.
Excluding real estate debt, the median debt per file stands at 16,898 euros.
Between 2022 and 2023, the proportion of debts linked to consumer credits - the heaviest pole of debt - increased by around two points, reaching 40% of the total (1.7 billion euros).
Almost three-quarters of files include at least one consumer debt.
On the other hand, the share of real estate in debt fell to 27% in 2023, half as much as 5 years ago.
“The dynamic growth in new home loans until 2022 has not resulted, until now, in an increase in the over-indebtedness of households who have taken out these real estate loans
,” notes the Banque de France.
The last source of debt, the share of current charges and other debts (33%) has increased by 9 points in total debt since 2015. Among this type of debt, the weight of charges linked to energy and communication bills is slightly increasing from a median debt per over-indebted household of 1107 euros in 2022 to 1182 euros in 2023, in the wake of increases in gas and electricity bills.
Despite everything,
“this increase remains moderate,”
notes Hélène Arveiller
, “the tariff shield seems to have had its effect, but its gradual lifting in the coming months is a point of vigilance
. ”
Overall, these figures show a
“normalization” after
“atypical”
Covid and post-Covid years
, develops the expert.
And despite the slight increase in the number of applications submitted, this figure remains 15% lower than that of 2019. It has even been halved since 2014. This
“good”
news, the deputy director attributes to
“better credit supervision consumption”
since in particular the Lagarde law adopted in 2010 and the reduction in the unemployment rate.