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The National Council for Statistical Information, a forum for discussion between producers and users of statistics in France - including the social partners - debated the measurement of inequality at its plenary meeting in February 2005. The main topics in the discussion were the responsiveness of public statistics providers and the capacity of their tools to reflect economic and social change..
The role of the National Council for Statistical Information (Conseil national de l’information statistique, CNIS), set up in 1972, is to ensure 'consultation between the producers and users of public statistics'. Its chair is the minister for the economy, and its membership reflects the main social and economic activities, with elected officials, civil service departments, employers’ organisations, trade unions and the voluntary sector all being represented. There are also some expert members. The Council, which has a purely consultative role, is a forum for discussion where statistics-producing organisations can present their study plans to economic and social stakeholders, who can then debate their relevance, purpose and socio-economic usefulness.
The CNIS held a debate on 'inequality indicators' at its plenary meeting on 11 February 2005. The debate was chaired by Jean-Baptiste de Foucauld, chair of the CNIS’s demography and living conditions section, with Mireille Elbaum, director of Research, Surveys, Evaluation and Statistics (DREES) at the Ministry of Health and Solidarity, Stéfan Lollivier, director of demographic and social statistics at the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (Institut de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques, INSEE), and Jacky Fayolle, director of the Institute for Economic and Social Research (Institut de recherches économiques et sociales, IRES), also taking part in the session.
The session, as Mireille Elbaum pointed out, focused less on debating inequality indicators in general than on the ones relating to the measurement of poverty. Poverty had been much debated in the press in 2004 (FR0403105F) on the occasion of the publication of a report from the National Observatory of Poverty and Social Exclusion (Observatoire national de la pauvreté et de l’exclusion sociale, ONPES). The director of INSEE and the chair of ONPES had responded to an opinion piece in Le Monde (on 22 July 2005) entitled 'Stay poor, you’re being watched' ('Restez pauvres, on vous observe'), which accused ONPES of offering a purely statistical description of the poverty phenomenon and adopting the most routine-bound categories of administrative action without questioning their relevance or origins. This controversy, echoed by the social actors concerned and some non-governmental associations, was doubtless behind the CNIS initiative.
The discussion at the February meeting focused on certain issues on which the public statistics institutions had attracted criticism.
Statistics users, above all, want the producers of statistics to respond more quickly to changes in the economic situation. Everyone agreed that real progress has been made in this respect, and Stefan Lollivier pointed out that, until 1995, statistics on inequality were published five years late. Many would like statistical data on social conditions to enable them to monitor change in real time. Until this is possible, INSEE studies do not provide sufficient matter for public debate and their contribution to it is tardy, it was argued. As Jacky Fayolle pointed out, this discrepancy is a problem at a time when the Organic Law on Budgets (Loi organique relative aux lois de finance, LOLF) (FR0410105F), intended to move to performance-based criteria in public management, is reinforcing the importance of evaluation by appropriate indicators of the socio-economic efficiency of public policy. In addition, there is a risk of inadequate or belated attention to some changes, such as the recent deterioration in the position of significant groups of wage-earners, with the appearance of the 'working poor', especially people with a steady job but no stable housing.
There are also questions as to the representativeness and reliability of inequality indicators. There was general agreement that the place given to monetary poverty was excessive and that this single measurement needs to be completed by others. The voluntary sector, and other social actors as well, consider that inequality indicators do not reflect social reality as they meet it on the ground. Although there can be no question of 'giving public opinion a certificate of scientific respectability', noted Jacky Fayolle, the discrepancy between 'the statistician’s certainties and the widespread public feeling that the figures don’t tell the whole story' gives food for thought. Thus, statistical tools were again criticised for underestimating income derived from assets in the measurement of inequality, for failing to take account of 'marginal' groups such as inmates in institutions or undocumented foreign nationals, and for ignoring more qualitative factors such as illiteracy, discrimination or unequal access to public goods and services.
Finally, one of the main topics for discussion among the speakers was the relevance of aggregate indicators. 'BIP 40' index, which originated in an initiative taken by an Inequality Alert Network (Réseau d’alerte sur les inégalités), is intended to be 'a barometer incorporating more than 60 statistical series concerning the various fields related to inequality and poverty; work, income, housing, education, health, the law.' Those who launched it find it more in keeping with the general perception of poverty and inequality, precisely because it incorporates a wide range of phenomena, the multiple components of poverty as it is experienced. It is, however, radically flawed in the eyes of the public statistics officials present at the CNIS meeting. In their view, trying 'to sum up the state of social inequalities in one figure' is an illusion. They stressed that composite indicators pose both theoretical (what do they measure?) and practical problems. Their crippling defect is that they roll disparate series together into one and, in so doing, lose all scientific value. INSEE and Eurostat prefer single indicators (integration into the labour market, sociablility, etc), which are better placed to give a faithful reflection of social reality.
The French Democratic Confederation of Labour (Confédération française démocratique du travail, CFDT) pointed out uncertainties surrounding areas such as measurement of relocations, the building industry cost price index and controversies about the retail prices index: 'The question is important. Is this index a real reflection of price realities in the country? The stakes are high, for it is a question of measuring inflation and its possible macro-economic consequences, and also of purchasing power and, as a result, wages policy.' The General Confederation of Labour-Force ouvrière (Confédération générale du travail-Force ouvrière, CGT-FO) wondered about the limitations of the retail prices index and its ability to measure changes in purchasing power and inequality accurately. For all these reservations, the two union confederations underlined their attachment to an institution capable of delivering high-quality statistical information necessary to democracy. The Confederation of Labour (Confédération générale du travail, CGT) insisted on 'the legitimacy of the CNIS debates, in a context where society, in different ways, is challenging the public statistics system' and stated that the CNIS provides a public forum for these challenges to be debated.
The Movement of French Enterprises (Mouvement des entreprises de France, MEDEF) employers' confederation stated that if statisticians want to serve democracy, '(they) should throw off their disguise'. It also argued that the CNIS had 'a duty to listen to everybody’s needs, and not just those of the government, the European Commission and the European Central Bank'.
The debate at the CNIS meeting was unable to provide unambiguous and definitive answers to the questions debated, and so confirmed, if confirmation were necessary, how important the measurement of social phenomena, especially the most acute amongst them, is as a political and social issue. More generally, there was agreement that while it is up to statisticians to guarantee their methods, with their associated constraints, and the scientific status of their measurements, they cannot ignore the diverse social demands emanating from the different components of the CNIS. (Yves Lochard, IRES)