Testimonials from retired seniors of modest means who talk about their pensions and allowances and how they organize their budget. Some are often helped by their municipalities (food, heating).
In 1962, even though retirement went from 9,000 to 11,000 francs a month, three million elderly people in France tried not to starve. The report of State Councillor Pierre Laroque, who makes an inventory of the situation of old age, emphasizes that this issue is as much of a societal order as economic and demographic and recommends several approaches. Among them, as explained by the Professor of Medicine and Gerontologist François Bourlière, it is necessary "to leave the right [to the elderly] to have occupations adapted to their age, adapted to their personal possibilities, which allow them not only to increase their resources but also intellectually and physically to maintain a certain balance that is necessary for their well-being". For Alfred Sauvy, demographer and director of the INED, retirement is conceived "as a means of making the old leave so that they rid the working population" going sometimes even to a form of segregation in "old quarters so that they are no longer in front of the eyes" (images of an old people’s home).
In 1962, Alfred Sauvy, Professor at the Collège de France, exposed the problem under the financial aspect of retirement in France. The number of "old men" is increasing in our country, so there is a financial problem. One has to make a choice: "One can ensure a relatively satisfactory standard of living for a limited number of people, or else ensure a lower standard of living for a large number of people." Sweden and Denmark have chosen to grant retirement at 67 with high pensions.
Micro-sidewalk of retirees on the amount of their retirement in 1962. Most admit to living very hard. A man says, "We don’t eat meat every day". Another confesses: "It is not living, it is vegetative".
The INA Galaxy 
