Reversionary pensions in France: Equivalent patrimonial rights to retirement, impacts of reforms and standard of living of pensioners.

Summary This thesis studies survivors' pensions in France, focusing on the "implicit" patrimonial dimension of pension rights. Indeed, pension rights constitute a component of the "wealth" of the insured, understood as an "implicit" saving, also called the asset equivalent of pension rights (EPDR). After having analyzed, in chapter 1, the great diversity of rules for opening and drawing survivors' pensions between schemes, as well as the different underlying logic of survivors' pensions between the private and public sectors, we show, in chapter 2, that the EPDR evaluated is greater, on average, in public sector schemes because of the greater qualifications of deceased spouses in these schemes and the more advantageous conditions for liquidating pensions. Moreover, the inequality in the distribution of this "pension wealth" is less than that generally observed for real household wealth, but is broken down differently according to the former sector of activity of the deceased spouse. Thus, several factors, other than the survivor's pension, would explain the level of the EPDR. The analysis, in Chapter 3, of the impact on the EPDR of the increase in the insurance period during the 1993 and 2003 reforms shows a significant reduction in the EPDR of pensioners whose deceased spouse had validated at least 60 quarters of contributions, but was affected by the measure. Finally, in Chapter 4, we show that the reversionary provisions allow widows and widowers on average to maintain their standard of living prior to the death of their spouse, although there are nuances depending on whether the deceased was a former executive in the private sector, a former non-executive in the private sector or a former civil servant.