Who Pays for Population Aging? Pension Budget Rules, Public Debt and Cohort Incidence in France
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This paper investigates who pays for population aging in the French pay-as-you-go pension system. Aging forces a choice among a higher resource rate, lower pensions, later retirement and public debt, which decides who bears the cost. The paper measures the incidence by birth cohort, relative to current law, with an accounting model driven by the 2026 INSEE projections and an overlapping generations model in general equilibrium. Current law absorbs most of the cost of aging by lowering pensions relative to wages and finances the rest by debt: in the central projection the dependency ratio passes in 2063 the critical level set by a ceiling on resources and a floor on pensions, and the pension debt reaches 50 percent of GDP in 2070. Holding it there requires a levy of at least 6.1 percent of earnings, which falls on the cohorts born after about 2006 when the debt is closed by a levy on earnings after 2070, a convention of the measure. Cutting the value of the pension point instead charges current retirees 2.7 percent of their pension wealth and the 2026 entrants 2.3 percent of their lifetime resources; raising the resource rate charges the 2026 entrants 1.9 percent; a budget-balancing retirement age raises the lifetime resources of the cohorts entering after 2070 by 10.7 percent. Raising the statutory age by two thirds of the gains in life expectancy at 60 keeps the ratio below the critical level until 2070 in the central projection. Indexing pensions to wages, if financed by debt, more than doubles the 2070 pension debt and costs the cohorts born after 2048 9.7 percent of their lifetime resources; financed by the resource rate, it charges every cohort born from 1993 on, most those born around 2028. The small open economy of the general equilibrium model reproduces these balances largely by construction; a closed economy lowers the 2070 debt under current law by 4 to 85 percent across specifications and leaves the order of the age rules and wage indexation unchanged where it has a solution. An online appendix scores the 2027 presidential platforms by one rule, as ranges, without ranking. Working paper, not peer reviewed, with the online appendix in the same file. First version: December 2024. This version: November 7, 2026. JEL classification: E62, H55, H63, J11, E21.
Author: Wabenga Yango, James
Institutions: Université du Québec à Chicoutimi, Université Laval
Language: English
Subfield: Finance
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225586390