The route for protest marches in Paris runs alongside our boulevard. The cycle of French life is that, each few years, the federal government tries to make everybody work longer, till a well-liked rebellion kills the plan. With Emmanuel Macron wanting to lift the minimal retirement age from 62 to 64, the rebellion has resumed. The opposite day I squeezed out of our constructing, previous the Communist get together stand in entrance of our door, on to the road filled with marchers, and scanned the banners: “Giving one’s life to the boss, no!”
I used to take the usual Anglo-Saxon view that the French ought to get with actuality. French 62-year-olds can now anticipate to live to 85, creating what’s near the longest common retirement in international historical past. Work till 65, and also you’ll nonetheless have 20 years for boules, I all the time thought. However my life right here has been a collection of realisations that on the largest points — the Iraq warfare, nuclear energy, cheese — the French are typically proper. I’ve modified my thoughts about pensions. The French have led the world in creating a wonderful new lifestage: the primary golden decade of retirement. Their system stays nearly reasonably priced. Everybody else must study from them.
The Valhalla for French pensioners is a latest invention. In 1970, Simone de Beauvoir wrote that society handled the outdated particular person as a “piece of garbage” with “depressing” dwelling requirements. However in 1981, François Mitterrand grew to become president touting a brand new imaginative and prescient of retirement: “Stay finally!” He reduce the retirement age from 65 to 60.
Even at the moment, many French staff stop earlier than they attain 60. As firms push out older workers, France is “near the world report for the inactivity rate of over-55s”, says economist Claudia Senik.
French retirement divides into two distinct phases. Part two is brutal: decay, widowhood, the old-age dwelling and eventually, nicely, the top. However the French best is the golden decade or so of freedom that comes earlier than. In your sixties, your work is finished, the children raised, the dad and mom often lifeless, and for the one time in your life, you are able to do no matter you want.
When French individuals retire, their well being initially improves, notes Senik, presumably as a result of they train extra. Few drop into the void: in 2003, solely 9 per cent described the passage into retirement as a nasty interval, reported the nationwide statistical institute Insee. French pensioners take pleasure in larger median dwelling requirements than working individuals, when you have in mind the truth that retirees sometimes aren’t funding youngsters or mortgages.
A retiree I do know right here regales me with tales of her winters in India, the place she and her mates get together like teenage backpackers. Danièle Laufer, in L’année du Phénix, cites different completely satisfied retirements: beginning the day with a two-hour breakfast within the backyard, going to a museum exhibition twice so as to bear in mind it, or monitoring down previous lovers. Males typically reinvent themselves as volunteers, and ladies as grandmothers.
A lot of French grownup life is structured within the service of the golden decade. Many individuals begin dreaming of retirement of their twenties. Solely 21 per cent of the French say work has a “essential” place of their lives, down from 60 per cent in 1990, studies the Fondation Jean-Jaurès.
Working life is now conceived of as 172 trimesters (for these born from 1973) paying contributions for a full state pension. The sum you pay in correlates solely modestly with how a lot the state provides you with on the finish. In France, personal pensions are uncommon, and retirement is supposed to equalise.
I perceive Macron’s arguments for reform. However the present generosity is just modestly unsustainable: France is ageing more slowly than neighbouring nations, its debt-to-GDP ratio of 112.5 per cent is under the US’s, and complete pension funds are forecast to stay secure as a proportion of GDP, as pensions gained’t proceed to maintain up with salaries.
Some reforms make sense — as an example, encouraging seniors to work at the least part-time, as about 400,000 persistants already do. However it’s unappealing to look at ministers, economists and enterprise leaders exhort everybody else to keep working. The exhorters are the longest-lived, highest-earning individuals in France. In contrast to most workers, they get standing and pleasure from their jobs.
Right here’s my draft proposal for French pension reform: make the highest 10 per cent of earners work till, say, 67. Since they’re the best taxpayers, that ought to assist replenish the system. Let bizarre individuals have enjoyable whereas they nonetheless can.
Comply with Simon on Twitter @KuperSimon and e-mail him at simon.kuper@ft.com
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