How the French pensions débâcle is a warning to us all

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

France has one of the most generous pension systems in the world. But several governments there have collapsed over questions about how the government will fund it. All over the world, aging populations are forcing governments to rethink their assumptions.

Today on the show, what France’s political fiascos teach all of us about the economics of an aging population, and what a retirement expert’s ideal retirement system might look like.

Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index 2025

Related episodes:

What would it take to fix retirement?

What does the next era of Social Security look like?

When Retirement Advice Goes Viral

For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	NPR.
0:11.6	This is the indicator from planet money.
0:13.8	I'm Darym Woods.
0:14.8	And I'm Whelan Wong.
0:16.0	French politics recently can only be described by one word,
0:19.9	Omnishambles.
0:21.1	Omni shambles, that's what you are. You're like that coffee machine? word, Omnishambles. Omnishambles, that's what you are.
0:22.9	You're like that coffee machine?
0:23.8	Yeah, Omni shambles, a.k.a. complete and utter mismanagement, flailing about,
0:29.0	made famous in the British comedy show The Thick of It, the political satire from the guy who brought us Veep.
0:35.1	Well, this word moved across the English channel to Paris.
0:38.4	Over the past two years, France has had five prime ministers ousted or resigned.
0:43.3	The latest Sebastian Le Corneux was reinstated by President Emmanuel Macron in October,
0:48.9	and that was just four days after Le Corneux's resignation.
0:53.2	People embarrassed of what they did best about this whole
0:55.9	situation. They protested loudly. Sounds like a good old-fashioned omnischambles. Indeed, vintage.
1:05.8	The common thread has been an inability of these prime ministers to get agreement to balance the budget.
1:11.4	French public debt is really high, and a large and growing chunk of that debt is from paying pensions.
1:17.5	Yeah, the French government pays a particularly generous amount to retirees.
1:21.3	The average French pensioner receives around $1,900 a month.
1:26.0	Compare that to their neighbors in the UK. An individual pensioner there gets around $1,900 a month. Compare that to their neighbors in the UK. An individual pensioner there
1:29.7	gets around 1,250. But the French government doesn't have much of a plan for how to pay for that
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 15 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.