EDEHN

Frédéric Gannon, Gilles Le Garrec, Gautier Lenfant & Vincent Touzé

The adoption of a universal point system modifies the link between labor income and pension benefits. In this paper, we propose to measure the possible impact of such a change when considering different wage trajectories. We identify seven stylized case studies to characterize the main properties of the current system for employees in the private sector with full careers under the social security ceiling. To address the transition issue, we setup two methods for valuing acquired pension rights in the old system. The first is the immediate conversion of the pension rights into points. The second consists in making the rules of calculation coexist and paying pension benefits acquired before the reform in proportion to the contribution period length in the old system. We contemplate a benchmarch scenario of constant long-run generosity for a given career. The impact is shown not to depend on the income level but on the salary profiles : a redistribution is carried out in favor of weakly growing profiles at the expense of the steeper ones. For careers with poor contribution years, significant declines are to be expected. However, for low-wage careers, an increase in the minimum pension is likely to limit the impact of these decreases or even to lead to a higher perceived effective pension. The way in which acquired pension rights are valued is not neutral. The conversion is rather advantageous for the least dynamic careers while the nesting of the rules is more generous for the most dynamic careers.