France’s national wealth in 2019  Growth underpinned by stock market prices

France’s national wealth (or net worth) continued to expand in 2019, reaching EUR 16,421 billion at the end of the year or 8.3 times its net domestic product. The robust rise (+4.8% after +4.4% in 2018) was driven by an increase in the country’s financial net worth, which was in turn linked to the stock market rally (rise of 25% in the SBF 120 after a drop of 12% in 2018).

Household net worth rose by 6.2% to EUR 12,561 billion. The increase was much larger than in the previous year (+2.1% in 2018), and was largely attributable to the rise in the valuation of financial assets.

The same factor also fuelled a sharp rise in non-financial and financial corporations’ own funds, which amounted respectively to EUR 11,042 billion (+13.4%) and EUR 3,270 billion (+6.1%). In contrast, general government net worth increased at a lower rate than in 2018 (+10.3% after +13.3% previously), reaching EUR 328 billion at the end of 2019.

In 2020, the Covid-19 crisis is expected to have had an impact on national economic wealth: net lending by households and net borrowing by non-financial corporations both increased sharply in the first half of the year.