The newspaper, Le Parisien, frequently publishes rankings and reports on various topics related to lifestyle, travel, and quality of life. I’ve seen headlines that start with “The best…” and continue with “places to live; to buy property; for families or students or retirees; to go on vacation” generally with the focus being on France. The news source The Local France had a story about the paper’s analysis of a government report concerning the most affordable cities around the country based upon your income. There were 3 financial levels and the top 15 locations are below. 

The government’s statistics agency, INSEE, gathered data on over 600 cities with a population of at least 20,000 people on which Le Parisien based their rankings. They took into account 40 criteria such as the price of fuel, housing, and food that affect the cost of living plus other factors that influence the quality of life including access to doctors and other medical facilities, high-speed Internet, and public transit. 

The three income levels were classified as “les cadres” (managers), “les employés” (salaried workers), and “les ouvriers” (blue-collar workers). Starting with the wealthiest, “les cadres” have an average disposable (after-tax) household income of 37,730€ and the top 5 cities that favor modern housing with plenty of close- by activities are:

• Senlis—40 km. from Paris
• Trouville-sur-Mer—a beach town in Normandy
• Noisy-le-Roi—50 minutes by RER train from Paris
• Rambouillet—1 hour by Transilien train from Paris
• Étaples—on the English Channel near the Belgian border

For “les employés” with an average disposable household income of 23,450€ there was a concentration on smaller towns, an hour or so from a big city, starting with:

• Tulle—in central France about 75 km. south of Limoges
• Chaumont—about 100 km. south west of Nancy
• Vesoul—west of Mulhouse, roughly 85 km.
• Bitche—near the German border, 60 km. north of Strasbourg
• Ussel—on the same highway as Tulle (above) but 85 km. from Limoges

With the attraction of well-paying blue-collar jobs, the top 5 cities for “les ouvriers” with an average disposable household income of 22,440€ were:

• Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne—in the Alps, 50 km. west of Grenoble
• Issoudun—about 30 km. south west of Bourges
• Saint-Claude—near the Swiss border about 30 km. from Geneva
• Épernay—in Champagne country, a 30-minute drive from its capital, Reims
• Albert—only 25 km. from Amiens in the north of the country

Since the most consulted page on our blog is “Budget” I thought that this ranking could help anyone looking to move to this country to get an idea about what level of income might be required for a comfortable life here. Whether or not seeing these top 15 cities makes it any easier to choose among the 35,000 communes in France is another question. Happy hunting!

Notes: While portions of the articles from Le Parisien and The Local France are freely available on the internet, you’ll need subscriptions to those publications to read the originals. The photo across the top is Château Chantilly near Senlis and in the first paragraph that’s a statue of Dom Perignon in Épernay.