Social protection and pensions: seniors are contributing more and more – Boursorama

A note from France Stratégie brings to light changes in the financing of aging, which is increasingly provided by the elderly even if the working population provides most of the contributions.

Retirees are increasingly contributing to the financing of social protection, of which they are the primary beneficiaries, making it possible to contain the increase in the contribution of working people who fund most of it, according to an analysis note from France Stratégie. “Today, expenses related to illness, pensions and the loss of autonomy of over 60s represent three quarters of social protection expenditure,” one reads in this note.

But “if the total expenditure for those over 60 is increasing faster than the GDP, it is only because there are more over 60s”.

“Social protection spending has increased significantly, from 15% of GDP in the late 1970s to over 30% of GDP in the late 2000s.” Over the past decade, their share in national wealth has stabilized (between 31 and 32% of GDP), despite the aging of the population, notes France Strategy.

“Make older people more involved”

This development is explained first of all by the pension reforms with the lowering of the effective retirement age and the method of calculating pensions, which are now indexed to prices and no longer to salaries. It is also explained by the diversification of the sources of their financing, with “a sharp drop in the share of social contributions” weighing on the working population, in particular for the benefit of the CSG, which also weighs on the elderly .

This made it possible to “make more use of the elderly” and to “limit the increase in the contribution of the working population to the financing of social protection”.

Consequently, “if the over 60s remain net beneficiaries of social protection, the average transfers they receive, net of the contributions they pay, have grown significantly less quickly than per capita GDP over the last decade.”

The bulk of social protection financing continues to weigh on individuals of working age. “On average, people aged 40 to 59 contribute around 19,400 euros per year, against 7,900 euros for those aged 60 to 79 and 5,100 euros for those over 80”.

“The standard of living of the oldest remains a little higher than that of the whole population” while on average in the OECD, those over 65 years of age had a standard of living corresponding to 87% of that in 2016. of the entire population.