Longévité, pénibilité et nouvel impératif de sobriété. Quelles incidences sur le choix de l’âge de la retraite ?

Three arguments have traditionally framed the debate on the retirement age: 1) the idea that longer life expectancy logically requires a proportional increase; 2) the fact that the hardship of work argues to the contrary for limiting this increase; and 3) the fact that, incidentally, we have long been able to combine increased life expectancy with a reduction in time worked, and that this could continue to be the case. Environmental urgency introduces a fourth argument that seems to go in the same direction. If less pollution means less production, then we need to work less rather than more. But this sobriety argument is not as one-sided as it seems. Fossil fuels have generally made possible the past decoupling of life expectancy and retirement age: it is by polluting more that we have been able to live better by working less. Can we do without these fossil fuels without having to make use of more labour? A simple heuristic model can be used to set out the main elements of the debate. The choice of retirement age has to strike a balance between constraints that do not all point in the same direction.