Equity and intergenerational redistribution: application to France and Greece.

Summary The social contract binding together people of different resources, social status, family situation, opportunities and ages is based on a complex network of numerous economic transfers that determine the character and vocation of the social policy of a given country. The enormous redistribution that results from this reveals the big question about intergenerational equity: are there generations favoured by the redistribution carried out within social protection? According to the model of this study, equity in the sense of equality of relative discounted balances is preserved in the case of France, where the generations born before 2000 will receive benefits almost equal to their contributions. With the exception of an economic shock or an unforeseen deterioration in certain demographic or social indicators, the relative balances remain mostly positive for the current generations of workers. However, the decline in the performance of the schemes reflects a certain imbalance in the system, which seems to favour the generations born before 1960. in any case, the estimates refute the alarmist forecasts that speak of sacrificed generations. In the case of Greece, equity is seen from a different angle: that of the instantaneous sharing of resources between different generations. Through the cross-sectional comparison of living standards, the most favored cohorts are those born between 1940 and 1955. Earlier generations have benefited from progressively increasing proportions of global growth, but for recent generations the standard of living is continuously deteriorating.