62, 64 years… The pension reform that the Prime Minister will unveil on January 10 should propose a two-year increase in the retirement age.
But this is a legal retirement age, that is, a limit below which you cannot benefit from a retirement pension.
In fact, not all French people leave at this age. Some leave earlier because they benefit from early retirement or special plans. Most leave especially later to contribute more and thus benefit from higher pensions.
Thus, while the legal retirement age is currently 62, the effective age is higher. According to statistics from the national old age insurance fund (CNAV), this real average retirement age in France in 2021 was 62.9 years, taking early departures into account, compared to 62.8 years in 2020.
Two more years since 2006
This age has risen steadily since it was 62 in 2011 and 61 in 2006. In a decade, the effective age has risen by nearly one year and nearly two years in the last 15 years.
Adjusted for early departures, this effective retirement age has also increased significantly. It went from 62.5 years in 2013 to 63.1 years in 2021 according to the CNAV.
An average age that is increasing for various reasons.
In the first place, because the entry into the labor market is increasingly late with the lengthening of the duration of the studies. Secondly, because the careers are less linear and, therefore, it is necessary to contribute for a longer time to benefit from a full pension.
Added to these socioeconomic reasons are the various reforms of previous governments. The one of 2010 in the first place that raised the legal age of departure from 60 to 62 years and that affects all generations from 2021. This law proposed by the former Minister of Labor Eric Woerth had also raised the legal age to benefit from the full rate without the years of contribution required from 65 to 67 years of age.
64 years in 2040
The 2014 reform known as the “Touraine Law” also contributed to this extension by increasing the contribution periods necessary to benefit from the full rate.
Before 2014, it was between 160 and 166 quarters. Since then, it has gone from 160 for the generations born before 1948 to 172 (ie 43 years) for the generations born after 1973 who will therefore retire around 2036.
Could Emmanuel Macron therefore wait for the effective median age to continue to rise naturally to reach the predicted 64 years? If this era really continued to progress, the pace would be much slower than with a reform. Thus, the Pension Guidance Council (COR) estimates in its latest projections for 2021 that the average retirement age will reach 64 years around the year 2040.
Too slow for the head of state who wants to raise the legal exit age to 64 at the end of his possible second term. Because even if the total deficit of old-age insurance (old-age solidarity fund + basic regime) recovered in 2021 after the abysmal deficit of 2020, it remains in the red at 2,600 million euros. According to the COR, the need for financing is expected to persist well into the 2040s.
Gold Emmanuel Macron quantified during his re-election campaign the spending of his program to 50 billion euros It intends to save in this item of spending to finance its investments in energy transition, health, dependency and lower taxes.
According to the candidate’s calculations, the reform would allow him to save 9,000 million euros per year in 2027. An estimate considered a bit optimistic by the Institut Montaigne, which estimates it at more like 7,700 million euros this year.
At 62, France is one of the European countries with the lowest legal retirement age. In 2021 he was 65 years old in Spain, 65 and 9 months (67 years old in 2030) in Germany and 67 years old in Italy. However, with exceptions to the rule which may be linked in particular to the type or duration of the contribution.
Source: BFM TV
