France: Social Protection for the Self-Employed

This chapter discusses the ongoing efforts to integrate the social protection of self-employed workers into the general social protection system in France. Several autonomous schemes and a complex system of contribution rates and entitlements obscure the relationship between gross and net wages and hinder the mobility of workers across jobs and occupations. While there have been efforts to harmonise the social protection of self-employed workers and employees, differences in coverage and contribution rates remain. The social protection of employees and self-employed workers is also managed by diverse institutions which are imperfectly coordinated. This paper describes the contribution rates and the social protection of various forms of employment in France. It provides information about the different components of the social protection of self-employed people (the organisation of schemes and their financial architecture, membership of the schemes, contributions and benefits) and compares the situation of different kinds of self-employed workers with that of employees. The chapter also discusses a special unemployment scheme for performing artists and related occupations, the Intermittents du spectacle.