Are the widowed too much insured? Survivor's pensions and living standards upon widowhood in France

To investigate compensation through survivor’s pensions at widowhood in France, this paper uses an administrative dataset to exploit a large sample of survivors whose income is known several years before and after widowhood. An event study first identifies the effects of widowhood on men’s and women’s living standards. Then, I measure how much this effect is offset by the survivor’s pension. To distinguish between total and partial overcompensation, I analyse the heterogenous effects of widowhood according to pre-widowhood share of couple income. The results show that both men's and women's living standards tend to increase upon widowhood. For both groups, survivors earning less than 40% of their couple income tend to be fully compensated by a survivor’s pension, while those earning more tend to be overcompensated. Survivor’s pensions largely ensure that women's living standards do not plummet upon widowhood while also helping to prevent them from falling below the poverty threshold.  

The gendered economic consequences of gray divorces in France, with Carole Bonnet and Anne Solaz

Drawing upon a large administrative database, the Permanent Demographic Sample (EDP), a panel that follows 4.4% of the French population every year, this paper presents new findings on the effects of gray divorce on living standards, divorce of individuals aged 50 years old and over, accounting for public and private transfers. We implement a two-way fixed-effect regression with a control group to assess the causal effects of divorce on both spouses. To do so, we compare divorced individuals with people that will divorce but are not divorced yet. Results confirm that women’s decrease in living standards is larger, on average, than that of men. For women, this decline is larger after 50 than before. Gray divorce seems more harmful to women and increase gender inequalities following divorce. Public and private transfers mitigate post gray divorce gender inequalities, especially for the poorest women. Recovery through re-partnering plays a important role in moderating the negative consequences of divorce, especially for women.

Late divorce and delayed retirement: Change in labor supply upon grey divorce

This article assesses the impact of grey divorce on the retirement behaviors of men and women in France. Divorce is an economic shock affecting individuals' income and wealth. Changing one’s labor supply is a coping strategy that divorcees can exploit to contain the impact of divorce. The increasing number of grey divorces, divorces occurring after the age 50, raises the specific issue of adapting of labor supply on the extensive margin for older workers, especially through postponing retirement. Using a new method allowing the implementation of a difference-in-differences strategy with staggered treatment on a French administrative panel data-set (Permanent Demographic Sample), the paper shows that grey divorce pushes women and men to delay their final exit from the labor market. That effect is stronger for women than men, but such an effect for the latter is new to the literature.