IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/wpaper/hal-05047224.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Macroeconomic and Distributional Impacts of French Pension Reforms
[Impact macroéconomique et distributif des réformes françaises des retraites]

Author

Listed:
  • Jhon Jair Gonzalez-Pulgarin

    (CEPREMAP - Centre pour la recherche économique et ses applications - ECO ENS-PSL - Département d'économie de l'ENS-PSL - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres)

  • François Langot

    (PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, GAINS - Groupe d'Analyse des Itinéraires et des Niveaux Salariaux - UM - Le Mans Université, CEPREMAP - Centre pour la recherche économique et ses applications - ECO ENS-PSL - Département d'économie de l'ENS-PSL - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres)

Abstract

The projected five-year increase in life expectancy poses significant challenges to macroeconomic equilibrium, as well as to the financial sustainability and distributional fairness of the French pension system. This paper evaluates the macroeconomic and distributional impacts — both in the medium and long run — of reforms aimed at ensuring the system's sustainability. Calibrated on French data, our model shows that extending working life by 3.3 years, as required to restore the system's financial balance, would increase GDP by 11.7% between 2025 and 2075. This contrasts with a 4% increase in GDP under a scenario involving a 13 percentage point reduction in pension benefits, and with stagnation in the case of a 9 percentage point increase in the contribution rate. Both the postponement of the retirement age and the reduction in pension benefits contribute to a rise in wealth inequality, as a growing share of income is derived from financial assets. The welfare analysis shows that extending the working life is the preferred adjustment scenario.

Suggested Citation

  • Jhon Jair Gonzalez-Pulgarin & François Langot, 2025. "Macroeconomic and Distributional Impacts of French Pension Reforms [Impact macroéconomique et distributif des réformes françaises des retraites]," Working Papers hal-05047224, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05047224
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05047224v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.science/hal-05047224v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05047224. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.