FARM POVERTY IN FRANCE DURING THE 1980S

Was poverty, more specifically relative poverty, still widespread duri ng the 1980s in French agriculture, i.e. within the context of an affl uent society? Even though important structural changes were taking pla ce, there were still factors at work tending to result in the impoveri shment of agricultural households. Evidence of the persistence of agri cultural poverty was difficult to establish because of methodological and conceptual issues and because of the non-reliability of much stati stical data. The income approach used proved to be inconclusive. Never theless, two symptoms of deprivation were found to exist. They prove t hat, despite the fact that agricultural households may own wealth, the y are subject to social marginalization. For many agricultural househo lds, their levels of consumption were much lower than for non-farm hou seholds and many women still refused to marry farmers of small or medi um-sized holdings. This agricultural poverty has neither the same form nor the same intensity as non-agricultural poverty.