Questioning and Applying the BLS concept of "Working Poor" to the case of France

In this paper we apply the US BLS definition of “working poor” to France. In 1997 they are 1.7 million working poor in France and 7 million for USA. We can identify for France four groups of working poor: the self-employed, the all year employed , employees balanced between work and unemployment and the long term unemployed. We have the same proportion of the three first groups in France than in US more or less 30% of total poor adults. The last group (long term unemployed) is out of US statistics on working poor which is different for France. The poverty risk is quite different between France and US. In France we notice three factors of poverty risk with the same intensity: low wage rate, involuntary parttime work and unemployment. For the US the most important factor is only the low wage rate status.