Éléments d'évaluation de la réforme des retraites

Assessing Pension Reforms. In order to assess the welfare costs and gains of different scenarios of pension reforms for French socio- occupational groups, we compute transition paths from the current situation to the steady states resulting from the ultimate effects of reforms. Accounting for different income and mortality risks, together with bequests, allows our model to better reproduce wealth inequality than standard life-cycle models do. Alternative pensions reforms are considered, combining : i) reduced generosity through lower replacement rates or postponing retire- ment ; ii) alternative financing schemes : current balance vs. building a temporary smoothing fund or a permanent funded pillar. The consequences of these scenarios on macro aggregates, inequality measures and age/group specific welfare and consumption profiles are computed at the rational expectation equilibrium. We first show how the situation of young cohorts deteriorates in the no-reform case, with a passive adjustment in contribution rates. However, the intergenerational redistributive effects of reforms are found to be large, thus supporting the view that structural pension reforms are not Pareto-improving. We especially show that postponing the retirement age increases inequalities more than reducing replacement rates does and that alternative financing adjustements involve only modest intra-generational redistributive effects.