The route of protest marches in Paris runs along our boulevard. The cycle of French life is that every few years the government tries to make everyone work longer until a popular uprising kills the plan. As Emmanuel Macron wants to raise the minimum retirement age from 62 to 64, the rebellion has renewed. The other day I slipped out of our building, past the Communist Party booth outside our door, into the street full of demonstrators, and scanned the banners: “Give your life to the boss, no!”
I used to take the standard Anglo-Saxon view that the French have to accept with reality. French people at 62 can now expect to live to 85, which is close to the longest average retirement in world history. Work until 65 and you’ll still have 20 years of balls, I always thought. But my life here has been a series of realizations that on the biggest issues – the Iraq war, nuclear power, cheese – the French are usually right. I’ve changed my mind about pensions. The French led the world in creating a glorious new stage of life: the first golden decade of retirement. Their system remains almost affordable. Everyone else should learn from them.
Valhalla for French pensioners is a new invention. In 1970, Simone de Beauvoir wrote that society treats the old person as “garbage” with a “miserable” standard of living. But in 1981 Francois Mitterrand became president, touting a new vision for retirement: “Live at last!” He lowered the retirement age from 65 to 60.
Even today, many French workers quit before they reach 60. As companies push out older workers, France is “close to the world record for the over-55 inactivity rate,” says economist Claudia Senik.
French retirement is divided into two distinct phases. Phase two is brutal: breakup, widowhood, nursing home and finally, well, the end. But the French ideal is the golden decade of freedom that came before that. In the sixties, your job is done, the kids are grown, the parents are usually dead, and for the one time in your life, you can do whatever you want.
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When the French retire, their health initially improves, Senik notes, possibly because they exercise more. Few fall into the void: in 2003, only 9 percent described the transition to retirement as a bad time, the national statistics institute Insee reported. French retirees enjoy a higher average standard of living than working people, if you consider the fact that retirees usually don’t finance children or mortgages.
A pensioner I know here regales me with tales of her winters in India, where she and her friends partied like backpacking teenagers. Danièle Laufer, in L’année du Phénix, cites other happy retirements: starting the day with a two-hour breakfast in the garden, visiting a museum exhibit twice so you can remember it, or tracking down past lovers. Men often reinvent themselves as volunteers and women as grandmothers.
Much of the life of the elderly French was structured in the service of the golden decade. Many people start dreaming of retirement in their twenties. Only 21 percent of French people say work has a “very important” place in their lives, down from 60 percent in 1990, the Fondation Jean-Jaurès reports.
Working life is now seen as 172 trimesters (for those born after 1973) with contributions towards a full state pension. The amount you pay correlates only modestly with how much the state will give you in the end. In France, private pensions are rare, and retirement is meant to equalize.
I understand Macron’s arguments for reform. But the current largesse is only moderately unsustainable: France is aging more slowly than its neighbors, its debt-to-GDP ratio of 112.5 percent is below that of the U.S., and total pension payments are projected to remain stable as a percentage of GDP because . pensions will not continue to keep up with wages.
Some reforms make sense – for example, encouraging older people to work at least part-time, as some 400,000 full-time workers already do. But it is unattractive to watch ministers, economists and business leaders exhort everyone else to keep working. Exhorters are the people with the longest lives and highest incomes in France. Unlike most employees, they derive status and enjoyment from their work.
Here’s my draft proposal for French pension reform: make the top 10 percent of earners work until, say, 67. Since they are the biggest taxpayers, this should help fill the system. Let the common people have fun while they still can.
Follow Simon on Twitter @KuperSimon and email him at simon.kuper@ft.com
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