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Population reporting unmet needs for medical care, by income level, 2021
– Lowest quintile: 4.5%
– Highest quintile: 1.5%
– Total: 2.8%
Main reason for reporting unmet needs for medical care, 2021
– Waiting list: 1.0%
– Too expensive: 1.6%
– Too far to travel: 0.2%
Population reporting unmet needs for dental care, by income level, 2021
– Lowest quintile: 9.4%
– Highest quintile: 2.2%
– Total: 5.4%
Population aged 15 years and over rating their own health as good or very good, by income quintile, 2021
– Highest quintile: 80.1%
– Lowest quintile: 58.3%
– Total: 67.8%
Adults aged 65 and over rating their own health as poor or very poor, by income, 2021
– Lowest quintile: 25%
– Highest quintile: 10%
– Total: 17%

Source: OECD (2023), Health at a Glance 2023: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, doi.org/10.1787/7a7afb35-en.

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Share of Household Income, 2010-2019
– Bottom 40%: 23%
– Top 20%: 37%
– Bottom 20%: 9%
Gini Coefficient, 2010-2019: 29
Palma Index of Income Inequality, 2010-2019: 1.1

Note: Gini coefficient – Gini index measures the extent to which the distribution of income (or, in some cases, consumption expenditure) among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. A Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 100 implies perfect inequality.
Palma index of income inequality – Palma index is defined as the ratio of the richest 10% of the population’s share of gross national income divided by the poorest 40%’s share.

Source: United Nations Children’s Fund, The State of the World’s Children 2023: For every child, vaccination, UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight, Florence, April 2023.

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“Unmet needs for medical care due to costs, distance to travel or waiting times were very low in France in 2022 according to the EU-SILC survey (3.2 % among all adults). However, there is inequality across income groups: 5.9 % of people in the lowest income quintile reported going without medical care – mostly because it was perceived as too expensive – compared to 1.4 % in the highest quintile.

“Unmet needs are greater for services that are less comprehensively covered by the SHI [Social Health Insurance], such as hearing aids, vision aids and dental care. For example, 6.1 % of French people reported unmet needs for dental care in 2021, but this proportion was much greater in the lowest income quintile (10.9 %), mainly for financial reasons. Since 2021, any patient with a complementary health insurance contract can access a core benefits package that covers 100 % of the costs for eye care, hearing aids and dental care without any form of copayment.”

Source: OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (2023), France: Country Health Profile 2023, State of Health in the EU, OECD Publishing, Paris/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, Brussels.

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“Although reducing health inequalities has been a public health priority for decades, large inequalities across socioeconomic groups remain unchanged. Over the period 2012–2016, life expectancy differed by 13 years between men in the lowest and highest income groups: among the wealthiest 5% of men, life expectancy at birth was 84.4 years, compared to 71.7 years among the poorest 5%. The difference was 8 years for women (Blanpain, 2018). Morbidity, measured by chronic disorders, was also much higher in more deprived populations: for comparable age and sex, the lowest 10% income group had 2.8 times more diabetes, 2.2 times more liver or pancreas diseases and 2.0 times more psychiatric disorders compared to the richest 10% (Allain & Costemalle, 2022).

“Health outcomes also vary largely across French regions (Bagein et al., 2022). In 2016–2018 mortality rates for men with cancer varied between 227 and 270 annual deaths per 100 000 across regions, while mortality from cardiovascular diseases varied between 193 and 295 deaths per 100 000 men (INSEE, 2021c). In 2017 standardized mortality rates were lowest in the capital region and highest in the Hauts-de-France region (in the north) (CépiDc, 2022). Some of these differences can be attributed to differences in socioeconomic situations but other factors include differences in lifestyle, occupational exposure to risk factors and availability of healthcare resources across areas (Blanpain, 2018). For example, cancer survival varies according to the level of social deprivation of the area where patients live: individuals diagnosed with cancers between 2006 and 2009 (followed-up until 2013) had an excess mortality from cancer up to twice as high in the most deprived areas compared to the least deprived areas (Tron et al., 2021). While recent data on the causes of mortality are lacking, inequalities across regions and socioeconomic groups appear to persist over time.”

Source: Or Z, Gandré C, Seppänen AV, Hernández-Quevedo C, Webb E, Michel M, Chevreul K. France: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2023; 25(3): i–241.

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“Data on ethnic and religious background and sexual orientation cannot legally be collected in France. The monitoring of health equity and discrimination in the healthcare sector is therefore reliant on surveys, often conducted by private institutions. Those that are available suggest that discrimination can be experienced by individuals belonging to minorities based on ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and disability. In France in 2019, 20% of lesbian women and 17% of gay men reported experiencing discrimination related to their sexual orientation by healthcare providers at least once during their lifetime (IFOP, 2019); depression was twice as frequent and suicide attempts three times more common in gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals compared to heterosexual (SPF, 2021b). In 2022 the data on health and health-related behaviours in the LGBTQ+ community are outdated or completely lacking, and questions on sexual identity are often omitted from health surveys (SPF, 2021b).

“Overall, the monitoring of health inequalities remains partial in France, especially concerning inequalities in minority groups. Furthermore, there is no regular data collection of socioeconomic determinants of healthcare access, which makes it difficult to address and follow the evolution of unmet medical care needs in socially vulnerable populations. Therefore, there is a lack of knowledge on how to achieve a real reduction of social inequities in health including research covering a number of areas, such as the association between social and geographic inequities in health, the role of gender in healthcare provision, and how to improve care delivery to reduce stigma and improve care for minority groups. However, since 2020 a new information system allows the linking of individual healthcare utilization data with socioeconomic characteristics of a representative sample of the French population (EDP-Santé). This will provide new insights into socioeconomic gradients in health and healthcare utilization in France (Allain & Costemalle, 2022; Dubost & Leduc, 2020).”

Source: Or Z, Gandré C, Seppänen AV, Hernández-Quevedo C, Webb E, Michel M, Chevreul K. France: Health system review. Health Systems in Transition, 2023; 25(3): i–241.

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World Health Systems Facts is a project of the Real Reporting Foundation. We provide reliable statistics and other data from authoritative sources regarding health systems and policies in the US and sixteen other nations.

Page last updated April 13, 2025 by Doug McVay, Editor.