Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 The misunderstood French welfare state
- 2 Corporatist welfare states: the residue of the past, or the wave of the future?
- 3 The “treason of the intellectuals”: globalization as the big excuse for France's economic and social problems
- 4 France's break with socialism
- 5 Persisting inequalities
- 6 The protected people
- 7 The excluded: immigrants, youth, women
- 8 The French exception
- Appendix: Some major pieces of social legislation, France 1893–2003
- Notes
- Index
6 - The protected people
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- 1 The misunderstood French welfare state
- 2 Corporatist welfare states: the residue of the past, or the wave of the future?
- 3 The “treason of the intellectuals”: globalization as the big excuse for France's economic and social problems
- 4 France's break with socialism
- 5 Persisting inequalities
- 6 The protected people
- 7 The excluded: immigrants, youth, women
- 8 The French exception
- Appendix: Some major pieces of social legislation, France 1893–2003
- Notes
- Index
Summary
As the Prime Minister has said, “la repartition” [pay-as-you-go, or pensions financed by current workers] is the symbol of the chain of solidarity which links the generations. Repartition is one of the most important social pacts of the Nation. This is why the government has made the clear choice to preserve this pact between the generations and to guarantee the continuation of pensions par repartition.
Official statement from the Prime Minister's office, quoting Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, 21 March 2000.France remains, to an overwhelming degree, a gerontocracy … [political and economic] power belongs mostly to those over the age of 60.
Jacques Véron, researcher at the Institut national d'études démographiques, 1995.Pensions are the only social program with the potential to bring down a French government and create a crisis on the order of May 1968. Pensions constitute, by far, the largest government expense. As life expectancies rise, the birth rate stagnates, and immigration to France is slowed by politicians, the general population ages and pension spending threatens to squeeze out other programs.
In every major Western industrial nation, pensions constitute by far the largest government transfer program. With the exception of the UK, no pension system today in Europe is fiscally solvent. By 1985, pensions alone amounted to half of public social spending in the OECD and in some nations this figure reached 60%. Health care for the elderly and pensions together took up over 70% of social spending in France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Greece, Spain, and other nations.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- France in CrisisWelfare, Inequality, and Globalization since 1980, pp. 149 - 175Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004