>The piece made me curious about France. Of the three economic models
>presented--social democratic, corporatist, liberal--I would have assumed,
>based admittedly on scant knowledge, that France is of the second. Is this
>true, or am I mistaken? (I am aware that these are not hard-and-fast
>categories.) The thing that struck me was that France has a poverty rate
>that tops even liberal countries like the UK and Australia (though, of
>course, it doesn't approach the US's). If France is of the liberal model
>their poverty rate makes perfect statistical sense. If it is of the
>corporatist model, however, it skews the typologies a bit. If this is so,
>what makes France such an anomoly?
Yeah, France is usually classed with the corporatist countries. These typologies are highly imperfect, of course. Some of the LIS authors make a distinction between liberal countries with a history of strong labor movements and those without, which basically is a way to explain why the U.S. is such an outlier.
>I guess maybe the bigger question is: Why does a country with a population
>as activist and take-it-to-the-streets as France's have such high poverty?
>Should this be disheartening? or is France just going through a rough
>period?
French poverty has been pretty stable by the various LIS measures (though it's hard to get a consistent series over time).
Doug