Wealth and early retirement age[Patrimoine et âge envisagé de départ à la retraite]

In France, retirement is strongly marked by a "social norm" since a large majority of people claim their rights at the full rate, whether by the length of contributions or by the legal retirement age. However, standards of living, working conditions, health and financial incentives are likely to influence these retirement paths. We study here the links between retirement age and amount of wealth. More specifically, we test the existence of a possible wealth effect by evaluating the effects of household's wealth on the age at which individuals plan to retire. To do this, we use the 2014-2015 INSEE "Life History and Wealth" follow-up survey. Two main conclusions are drawn from the econometric analysis. The first concerns households with debt (on their main home or for their business), who plan to withdraw from the labour market later. The second shows that, whatever the definition of wealth (gross, net, financial), a later retirement is anticipated if one is relatively poor or relatively rich: the wealth effect on the envisaged retirement age is therefore not linear. These "delay" effects at the extremes are obviously of a different nature: for reasons of standard of living for the poorest; probably for other reasons for the richest (interest in work, intergenerational altruism, etc.).