The Laroque report and the question of old age in France in 1962

The Laroque report and the question of old age in France in 1962

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).

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File : 1962: the old age policy

Publication date : 4 May 1962