Lhe French have just entrusted Emmanuel Macron with a new five-year mandate at the head of the country. The challenges are multiple and transitions are at the heart of the issues to be addressed. While, under this five-year term, Catherine Deneuve, Jacques Dutronc, Michel Polnareff, Françoise Hardy, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Alain Souchon, Jane Birkin, Michel Drucker, Pierre Arditi, Roselyne Bachelot, Michel Denisot, Eva Joly, Sylvie Vartan, Daniel Pennac and Jean-Louis Debré will celebrate their 80and anniversary, like more than 2 million of their fellow citizens, one of these issues is that of the demographic transition.
These new octogenarians will be added to the four million aged 80 and over currently living in France. People over sixty and over already outnumber those under twenty, and we are going to experience a demographic upheaval of the first importance, with one person in three who will be aged sixty or over in 2050, i.e. an increase of 80% in forty-five years, changing the face of France.
In this context, aging in France does not appear to be easy for many of our fellow citizens. Beyond the problems related to the loss of autonomy, more and more seniors, often the poorest, live this stage of their life in profound solitude. As our latest barometer showed, 530,000 elderly people are in a situation of social death in 2021, compared to 300,000 in 2017, and 2 million elderly people are isolated from family and friend circles in 2021, when there were 900,000 in 2017 (“ Solitude and isolation barometer : when you are over 60 in France in 2021”).
Unfounded, unfair, abusive reviews
This degradation of social ties is accompanied by a more global disintegration of the cultural and social perception of seniors in our country. Discrimination related to age infects our society. Unfortunately, we were only too able to see this during the presidential campaign: the place taken by the elderly in the democratic game was the subject of unfounded, unfair criticism when it was not offensive, especially on social networks.
While the pact between the generations is weakening, it is the responsibility of the Head of State and that of all the public authorities to prevent any initiative that would be likely to further fracture our social cohesion.
From this point of view, the pension reform could carry a certain number of risks. If the fifth branch of Social Security, created under the previous five-year term, must have the necessary means, it seems dangerous to us to explain that this reform is essential to finance aid for autonomy with the risk, in the already ageist context in which we live, to lead several generations to believe that they will have to work longer “because of the elderly”.
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