The Health Crisis and the Financial Situation of Households in France – A Study on Monthly Bank Data

Abstract

In view of the magnitude and the sudden nature of the health crisis in 2020, economists and statisticians have explored new sources of data to describe the development of the financial situation of households. The bank data used in this study, an anonymised panel of La Banque Postale customers, offer the twofold advantage of being able to be used virtually in real time and of recording monthly (or even daily) changes in income, spending and wealth. First, we show that while the crisis affected incomes in a limited and temporary way in 2020 for most households (regardless of income level), populations on the margins of the labour market suffe-red more. We then specifically study the situation of recipients of the revenu de solidarité active (RSA), a French in-work benefit. Although their social security benefits did not decrease in 2020, their incomes increased less than in a normal year because they did not return to employment. The exceptional government support paid out in May and November 2020 only partially coun-terbalanced these lower employment opportunities. © 2022, Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques. All rights reserved.