Indigenous World 2020: French Polynesia

A former French colony, French Polynesia has since 2004 been an Overseas French Territory (Collectivité d’Outre-mer) of 277,000 inhabitants (around 80% of whom are Polynesian)1 with relative political autonomy within the French Republic through its own local institutions: the government and the Assembly of French Polynesia. Despite the recovery of economic growth and increased tourism in the last three years, social equality has declined. Surveys conducted by the French Polynesian Statistics Institute – the 2015 Family Budget survey in particular – show that income inequality is greater in French Polynesia than in metropolitan France. This can be explained largely by the “very poor redistribution effort of the Polynesian tax system”,2 i.e. the lack of income tax. In 2015, a fifth of the Polynesian population was living below the poverty line.3