The French are up in arms over retiring at 64. How do other countries compare? | Act Daily News Business

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Act Daily News
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A nationwide strike in France to protest an increase within the retirement age drew greater than one million folks onto the streets on Thursday earlier than ending in violent clashes with police in Paris and different cities.

The protest adopted a strike of an analogous magnitude in January and days of smaller walkouts and demonstrations in between. And extra industrial motion is deliberate for subsequent week.

What’s making the French so offended is a brand new retirement age that can nonetheless be one of many lowest within the industrialized world.

Under a brand new legislation, pushed by means of parliament and not using a vote final week, the retirement age for many French employees might be raised from 62 to 64.

That will nonetheless preserve France beneath the norm in Europe and in lots of different developed economies, the place the age at which full pension advantages apply is 65 and is more and more transferring in the direction of 67.

In the United States and the United Kingdom, the retirement age is between 66 and 67, relying on the 12 months you have been born. Current laws envisages an additional rise from 67 to 68 in Britain between 2044 and 2046 (though the timing of this improve is being reviewed and will change).

State pensions in France are additionally extra beneficiant than elsewhere. At practically 14% of GDP in 2018, the nation’s spending on state pensions is bigger than in most different nations, in line with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The French authorities has defended the retirement reform — which incorporates different modifications — as essential to preserve the pension system funded. Taxes on present employees pay for the advantages of retirees, and as folks stay longer and extra child boomers retire the system would in any other case finally go bankrupt.

The financing of pension methods is a priority in lots of developed economies.

“Government agencies predict massive deficits in the coming years, as boomers continue to retire, and they need to make changes very quickly — otherwise they will lose money to invest in other things,” Renaud Foucart, a senior economics lecturer at Lancaster University in England, advised Act Daily News in January when the French plan was proposed.

Pension reform is “seen as taboo” in France, in line with Foucart.