Disability and social security reforms: The French case

The French pattern of early transitions out of employment is basically explained by the low age at “normal” retirement and by the importance of transitions through unemployment insurance and early-retirement schemes before access to normal retirement. These routes have exempted French workers from massively relying on disability motives for early exits, contrarily to the situation that prevails in some other countries where normal ages are high, unemployment benefits low and early-retirement schemes almost non-existent. Yet the role of disability remains interesting to examine in the French case, at least for prospective reasons in a context of decreasing generosity of other programs. The study of the past reforms of the pension system underlines that disability routes have often acted as a substitute to other retirement routes. Changes in the claiming of invalidity benefits seem to match changes in pension schemes or controls more than changes in such health indicators as the mortality rates. However, our results suggest that increases in average health levels over the past two decades have come along with increased disparities. In that context, less generous pensions may induce an increase in the claiming of invalidity benefits partly because of substitution effects, but also because the share of people with poor health increases.pensions ; social security ; disability ; early retirement ; unemployment ; senior

Disability and Social Security Reforms:The French Case

The French pattern of early transitions out of employment is basically explained by the low age at “normal” retirement and by the importance of transitions through unemployment insurance and early-retirement schemes before access to normal retirement. These routes have exempted French workers from massively relying on disability motives for early exits, contrarily to the situation that prevails in some other countries where normal ages are high, unemployment benefits low and early-retirement schemes almost non-existent. Yet the role of disability remains interesting to examine in the French case, at least for prospective reasons in a context of decreasing generosity of other programs. The study of the past reforms of the pension system underlines that disability routes have often acted as a substitute to other retirement routes. Changes in the claiming of invalidity benefits seem to match changes in pension schemes or controls more than changes in such health indicators as the mortality rates. However, our results suggest that increases in average health levels over the past two decades have come along with increased disparities. In that context, less generous pensions may induce an increase in the claiming of invalidity benefits partly because of substitution effects, but also because the share of people with poor health increases.Pensions, Social Security, Disability, Early Retirement, Unemployment, Senior.

Aspiration à la retraite, santé et satisfaction au travail : une comparaison européenne

Ce travail utilise la première vague de l'enquête européenne SHARE pour analyser l'effet de l'état de santé et de la satisfaction au travail sur les préférences en matière d'âge de départ en retraite dans 10 pays européens. Les préférences concernant l'âge de départ sont mesurées par la probabilité de réponse positive à une question sur le souhait de partir à la retraite le plus rapidement possible. Nous nous intéressons aux rôles joués par la santé et les conditions de travail pour expliquer à la fois les différences de préférence au niveau individuel et les différences de préférence entre les pays. Au niveau individuel, les effets obtenus sont conformes aux attentes, mais ne contribuent que faiblement à expliquer les différences moyennes constatées entre pays. A état de santé et conditions de travail individuelles identiques, nous observons un gradient nord-sud du souhait de départ précoce à la retraite qui reste proche de l'effet brut. Ces résultats sont robustes au contrôle par des indicateurs de contexte institutionnel (générosité des systèmes de retraite) et au contrôle du biais de sélection lié au fait que la question ne touche que des individus encore en activité.Retraite, santé, conditions de travail

Labor force participation by the elderly and employment of the young: The case of France

One of the justifications provided for early retirement policies in developed countries is the idea that such policies can facilitate access to the labor market for younger people and help lower global unemployment. But many questions remain on the true effect on young workers of these policies. The objective of the present paper is to study the long term relationship between labor force participation of the old and unemployment of the young in France since the beginning of the 1970s. Establishing causal relationship of the reduction of labor force participation of the old on employment prospect of the young is a challenging work. Evidence of the correlation between youth labor market outcomes and older worker's labor force participation plead more in favor of a positive association between younger and older workers' employment. An increase in the older workers' participation is indeed correlated with an increase in the employment rate of young workers and a decrease in their unemployment rate. Even controlling for the economic cycle, this positive association remains - albeit less robustly. These correlations, based on times series, are not however evidence of causal relationship between younger and older workers' employment. We then use an index summarizing the intensity of policies aiming at removing older workers from the labor market, based on Social Security wealth. The effect of the wealth index on youth labor market outcomes is always significant, whatever the set of the control variables we use and with a similar size and the same sign. The coefficient is negative for both the unemployment and employment of youth, with or without controlling for school attendance. In France policies aiming at removing older workers from the labor market have been prompted by increase in unemployment. Granger causality tests between youth unemployment and the Wealth index show therefore a significant link in both directions, whereas nothing is significant between youth employment and the Wealth index. Hence if we do not find evidence that reducing labor force participation of the old provide jobs for the young, we cannot exclude altogether that some general and unaccounted cause is hiding its true impact.retirement policies ; labor market participation ; unemployment

Wanting to Retire as Early as Possible: Health, Job Satisfaction and Monetary Factors,

Individual aspirations concerning age at retirement vary between and within countries. Aspiration toward early retirement may depend both on economic and non-economic factors. The latter include job satisfaction, health and life expectancy. But the desire to retire as early as possible may also depend on economic or monetary factors and particularly on the structure of pension entitlements. By combining data from the Share survey and country-specific indicators of pension entitlements recently released by the OECD, it is possible to analyse the role of all these factors. At the individual level, it seems that health and job satisfaction are significant determinants of the desire to retire as early as possible. However, these non-economic factors only explain a limited share of the cross-country differentials due to their low level of cross-country variability. Economic factors seem to play a larger role at this cross-national level, at least for some of the countries under review.Retirement, Monetary factor, Health, Job Satisfaction

The density of the ruin time for a renewal-reward process perturbed by a diffusion

International audienceLet $X$ be a mixed process, sum of a brownian motion and a renewal-reward process, and $\tau_{x}$ be the first passage time of a fixed level $x<0$ by $X$. We prove that $\tau_x$ has a density and we give a formula for it. Links with ruin theory are presented. Our result may be computed in classical settings (for a Lévy or Sparre Andersen process) and also in a non markovian context with possible positive and negative jumps. Some numerical applications illustrate the interest of this density formula