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20 Eur. J. Soc. Sec. 3 (2018)

handle is hein.journals/eujsocse20 and id is 1 raw text is: Article EJSS European journal of Social Security 2018, Vol. 20(1) 3-20 hat does it mean to be rich?2018 Reprints and permnissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav Som e conceptual and DOl: 10.1177/1388262718760911 empircal isuesjournals.sagepub.com/homnelejs OSAGE Pierre Concialdi* IRES (Institut de recherches economiques et sociales), Noisy-le-Grand, France Abstract Over the past decade, a growing literature has shed light on the rise of inequalities at the very top of the income distribution. There is no doubt that such extreme inequalities do threaten social cohesion and that some public policies are needed in order to tackle this issue. The design of these policies requires setting some benchmarks that could serve, at least, as guidelines to promote efforts towards the reduction of inequalities. In the same way that the fight against poverty can usefully benefit from researchers' efforts to define poverty, the fight against extreme inequalities could also benefit from some definition of rich people. Nevertheless, very little attention has been given to the definition of the rich in the academic literature. The purpose of the paper is to try to fill this gap. It draws on previous definitions of an affluence line and proposes some estimates for three countries (France, Ireland and the UK). Keywords Rich, poverty, affluence line, inequality, reference budgets Introduction Over the past two decades, there has been a growing literature on 'top incomes'.' One of the main findings of this research is that inequalities have not only been rising quite sharply in many 1. Piketty's best seller Capital in the Twenty-First Century is probably the most prominent example of this literature. * This article was awarded the SAGE/FISS prize for the best, previously unpublished paper presented at the 2017 FISS Conference held in Sigtuna, Sweden. Corresponding author: Pierre Concialdi, IRES (Institut de recherches economiques et sociales), 16 Boulevard du Mont d'Est, 93192 Noisy-le-Grand Cedex, France. E-mails: pierre.concialdi@gmail.com; pierre.concialdi@ires.fr

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