At 62, 25% of the poorest French men are already dead. This very striking figure is brandished by political leaders who deplore the social inequalities linked to the pension reform, such as Anne Hidalgosocialist mayor of Paris, Clemence Guette, deputy of La France insoumise (LFI) or Laurent Berger, secretary general of the CFDT. Where does this data come from and is it sufficient to illustrate the inequalities faced with the increase in the retirement age?
- Where does this number come from?
These data come from a 2018 INSEE report on life expectancy by standard of living. They were taken up in December 2021 by an infographic by Release, very shared since then on social networks, which emphasizes the fact that at age 62, 25% of French men who are among the poorest 5% have already died, i.e. five times more than the poorest 5% rich. This means that a person who has spent his entire life in the poorest 5% of the population has a higher than average mortality rate and a one in four risk of dying before the age of 62. A proportion that even reaches 29% if the legal retirement age is raised to 64, as provided for by the government reform, calculated Release.
Good to remember: at the (current) retirement age, 25% of the poorest are already dead ???? Read:… https://t.co/QgAHXyy0ac
- The limitations of this statistic
This INSEE data only takes into account the situation of men who remain in the “first quartile” of standard of living for their lifetime – the poorest 5% of the population. How many are there? The study does not specify. In a ticket they blogtwo economists, Ulysse Lojkine and Michaël Zemmour, qualify the scope of this figure, because many people alternate more or less austere and more or less prosperous periods during their lives, causing them to move through the income gulps.
They also note that the 5% slice of the lowest monthly living standards corresponds to an income of 466 euros per month. These people are often far from employment and do not benefit, or very little, from pension rights: the reform to come should not change anything in their most precarious situation.
It is also interesting to focus the debate on the temporality of this phenomenon. MM. Zemmour and Lojkine rely on additional data from Insee to demonstrate that “half of those who die before the age of 62 have already died before the age of 55”. In other words, the data retained by Release do not give any indication of the effect of raising the retirement age on the probability that the poorest will be able to benefit from it.
Another limitation: this data only concerns men. What about women? At age 62, 13% of the poorest women have died compared to 3% among the wealthiest. A not insignificant difference but less pronounced than in men.
- A mechanical increase in mortality with increasing retirement age
Even if this data is to be taken with precaution, a delay in the retirement age would mechanically increase the proportion of workers who will die before reaching this age.
According to a note by Mr. Lojkine published on the HAL site, the reform planned by the government would increase pre-retirement mortality by 1.4 percentage points on average, with disparities according to living standards. For men aged 43 to 58, the bottom three quintiles (i.e. the lowest 60% of men) have a five times higher risk of dying before retirement age than the top two quintiles – a similar proportion can be observed for women. We would thus go on average from one risk in twenty to one risk in fifteen of dying before retirement.
Moreover, the pension reform in preparation would significantly increase the risk of short retirement. An increase mainly supported by the poorest because Lojkine concludes that an individual among the 40% of men who are the most modest “has a one in ten chance of dying before retirement, a one in five chance of having a very short retirement (five years or less) and a one in three chance of having a short retirement (ten years or less)”.