Abstract.Day3.dAlbis

Financing Consumption by Age in France: Mutations in Savings Over the Last Forty Years

Hippolyte d'Albis, Julien Navaux, and Jacques Pelletan

This article presents the National Transfer Accounts for the period 1979-2019 in France. They reveal that consumption by the over-60s has exceeded that of the working population over the last decade. Their high consumption is not explained by labor income, neither by more generous public transfers, but by reduced savings at older ages. Thus, financing the consumption of the elderly relies increasingly on individual resources and less on public transfers, even if these transfers remain significant compared to those received by seniors in the other countries studied. the main resource used by French seniors to finance their consumption is the reduction of their savings. Since 2016, the net savings of the over-60s has been lower than those of the working-age population. Furthermore, going beyond the commonly used definitions of savings in the NTA methodology, we analyze how the results are modified by taking into account the flows corresponding to living donations and inheritances, both increasing throughout the period and which are part of private transfers. the use of resources to finance consumption is then significantly modified.