“We are living longer and therefore (…) we have to work longer”, said the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, facing the press, in mid-December. This “simple observation” is one of the arguments used by the government to justify postponing the legal retirement age to 64 or 65, whereas it is currently set at 62. It’s a fact: life expectancy has increased. But this average hides significant disparities according to sex, social category and occupation; and it hides the health problems that can limit the quality of life of older people.
The French are living longer and longer. Constantly increasing, life expectancy is the theoretical average lifespan of a newborn relative to the mortality conditions of the period. Thus, a baby girl born in 2021 could live to be 85.4 years old on average, according to current mortality conditions, while a boy born in the same year would live to be 79.3 years old, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE). Since 1950, women and men have gained fifteen years.
However, this general progression hides inequalities, not only between men and women, but also according to socio-professional categories (CSP). Testifies to this, for example, the life expectancy of men today aged 35, which rises to 84 years for a manager, i.e. 6.4 years more than for a worker, based on mortality conditions between 2009 and 2013. The gap is even greater when compared with a female executive of the same age, who can hope to reach 88 on average.
Living longer does not necessarily mean living better. To take into account the state of health at the time of retirement, another indicator exists: disability-free life expectancy, also called life expectancy in good health. It consists of measuring the average lifespan of a person before they are affected by limitations in daily activities.
In 2020, disability-free life expectancy reached 64.4 years for men and 65.9 years for women, according to INSEE. It increases slightly, in the same proportions as life expectancy. This theoretical age also varies according to the CSP. Thus, 23% of French people suffered from a physical limitation during their first year of retirement in 2018, according to the Ministry of Health. Once again, the most affected are the workers: 34% are forced into the activities of daily life upon their retirement.
This inequality was, for example, translated very concretely following the Balladur reform in 1993, which increased the period of contribution necessary to receive a pension. According to one study conducted by two French economiststhis reform had a clear impact on perceived health (i.e. the subjective feeling of being in good health declared by individuals) among the least educated, whereas it does not seem to have had this effect on the most educated individuals.
Finally, if it aims to bail out the coffers, this kind of reform is not without adverse effects on the financial balance of the system. Indeed, as shown a study published in 2021 by the Theory and evaluation of public policies laboratory, postponing the retirement age is tending to increase “significantly” the frequency and duration of sick leave, in particular due to the gradual deterioration in the state of health of workers at the end of their career.