L’effet de la réforme des retraites de 2010 sur l’absence maladie

In 2010, a new reform of the French pension system took place. It consisted in delaying the pension eligibility age by 2 extra-years within a rather short transition period as only the 1950-1955 generations were concerned. While the stated objective of the reform was the increase of senior workers’ labour supply and the reduction of the pension insurance deficit, a number of studies have shown that similar reforms usually induce indirect effects as well, including shifts towards alternative insurance schemes such as unemployment or disability. In this paper, we use administrative data from the Hygie panel 2005-2015 to assess another indirect effect ; namely the effect on sick-leave. This, we believe, is an important issue as if such an effect turns out to be significant, then that would imply that while the reform aimed at reducing the pension insurance deficit, it also induces extra-costs for the public health insurance in terms of sick pay. We consider alternative measures of sickness absence and show that the reform has indeed resulted in an increase in these (+1,7 percentage point for the probability of being on sick leave and +1 day for the annual number of sickness absence days). This is true for the whole population although the highlighted effects are gender-sensitive : While the estimated effects on the probability of sick leave are higher for women, they are lower when it comes to the duration of absence spells (+0,7 day for women and +1,3 day for men).