With his appointment, François Bayrou put the most contested reform of 2023 back on the table: pensions. While the Prime Minister would like to see it “resumed without being suspended”, a study by the Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees) should reinforce the fervent defenders of postponing the retirement age. According to the results of the latter, life expectancy (EV), although affected by the Covid-19 health crisis, continues to increase in France. In 2023, this rose to 23.6 years for women aged 65 compared to 22 years in 2005, and to 19.8 years for men of the same age, compared to 17.7 years in 2005.
But are these extra years of life accompanied by good health? This is the question that the Drees examined thanks to its indicator of life expectancy without disability (EVSI), that is to say the number of years “that a person can hope to live without being limited by a health problem in daily activities. “When it increases, life expectancy says nothing about the state of health and autonomy in which the additional years gained are lived. It must be supplemented by an indicator which combines both quantitative and qualitative dimensions to better appreciate the benefit of these years to live,” she explains.
Above the European average
According to the results of the study carried out by Drees using this indicator, in 2023, a 65-year-old woman can hope to live another 12 years without disability, and 18.5 years without severe disability. A 65-year-old man can live another 10.5 years without disability and 15.8 years without severe disability. Respectively, disability-free life expectancies have increased by 1 year and 11 months and 1 year and 10 months since 2008. “These developments reflect the decline in age from which chronic diseases linked to aging and limiting people appear. in their daily lives”, analyzes the Drees.
And the least we can say is that the French have nothing to envy of their neighbors. In France, in 2022, disability-free life expectancy at age 65 was 2 years and 6 months higher than the European average for women and 1 year and 4 months for men. Data giving France and Overseas 5th place in the ranking of the 27 countries of the European Union in terms of EVSI for women at age 65, and 7th place for men.
A relative increase
The developments highlighted in this study must, however, be analyzed with caution. At issue: the subjective nature of the indicator. Unlike data on life expectancy, the EVSI is constructed from responses from a sample of people to the following question: “Have you been limited, for at least six months, because of a problem health, in the activities that people usually do? These must then specify whether these are strong limitations or not. In 2023, the sample was composed of 22,000 households from mainland France, Guadeloupe, Guyana, Martinique and Reunion.
Developments during the Covid-19 pandemic, from 2019 to 2022, should therefore be taken with a grain of salt. Indeed, the VE fell in 2020, with the increase in the number of deaths linked to the virus. That same year, life expectancy at age 65 was 22.9 years for a woman, compared to 23.4 years the previous year. Identical observation among men with 18.9 years in 2020 compared to 19.6 years in 2019. Then, against all expectations, life expectancies increased in 2021.
An increase that Drees attributes to “a sharp drop in the proportion of people declaring limitations in the survey”. For the public statistics service, this is due to the collection methods of 2020 and 2021, affected by the Covid-19 epidemic. While the sample is usually interviewed face-to-face, part of it had to be questioned by telephone in 2020, due to the first confinement. The following year, the survey was collected entirely by telephone. “This change […] may have affected the composition of the sample, as it is more difficult to reach people likely to report limitations in their daily life over the telephone,” the study reads.