Bourgogne-Franche-Comté: who are the richest? where do they live ? where does their fortune come from?

1-Who are the biggest fortunes in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté?

Bourgogne-Franche-Comté has around 16,000 people with very high incomes, which ranks them among the wealthiest 1% of the French population.

INSEE identified very precisely 15,690 in 2017, or 0.6% of the regional population, which ranks Burgundy-Franche-Comté 9th among metropolitan regions. These very high income people live with more than 9,060 euros per month.

In two-thirds of the cases, these very wealthy people are in a relationship and often have no or more dependent children.

This is due to their age, because the wealthiest are mostly seniors aged 50 to 75, explain Hugo Andrieu and Amandine Ulrich, the authors of this INSEE study published on Tuesday, May 12, 2020.

2-Where do we find the richest in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté?

People with very high incomes live mainly in three types of places: big cities, famous wine-growing areas and along the Swiss border.

1-People with very high incomes are more numerous in large cities, where there are the most high-paying jobs, especially managerial jobs.
The figures speak for themselves: “40% of beneficiaries of very high incomes in Bourgogne-Franche-Comté reside in the eight inter-municipal headquarters of the departmental prefectures. Dijon Métropole has the highest proportion.”

2-The wealthiest people are also very present in wine-growing areas, especially where the vineyards are renowned and produce wines sought after all over the world: Côtes de Nuits, Côtes de Beaune, Chablisien, Chalonnais and Mâconnais.

3-Very high incomes also often live near the Swiss border. “A large number of frontier workers live there, often very well paid. Thus, more than 1% of the population of the intermunicipal associations of Morteau and Pontarlier have very high incomes,” say the authors of the study.

Out of the eight departments of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté, the Côte-d’Or comes in first with the highest number of very high income beneficiaries (0.8% of its population).

In second position, we find the Doubs which groups 0.6% of people with very high incomes.

Conversely, it is in Haute-Saône and Nièvre that we find the fewest people with very high incomes (0.4% of the population).

3-Where does the income of the very wealthy come from?

“People with very high incomes perceive more often than others income from self-employed activities and property“, note Hugo Andrieu and Amandine Ulrich.

Concretely, in the highest income resources, we find a good part of:

-high agricultural revenues from viticulture

–heritage income (i.e. income from movable and immovable assets, financial income…) In Côte-d´Or, for example, the wealthiest derive 29% of their income from heritage income.

In the end, ‘even if salaried activities are their main resources, they constitute only 35% of their income, significantly less than for their metropolitan counterparts (46%) “, add the two analysts from INSEE.

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