Funded private pillars are well developed in many countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland and the Netherlands. In France, the development of occupational pension plans has been limited. However, in this country, households tend to
increase their personal saving by contracting life insurances in order to finance their retirement.
By encouraging the individualization of retirement planning, reforms of public pension systems
could expose a vulnerable part of the population to the risk of poverty. Among households, lowincome
and women are particularly vulnerable during their working life and then during their retirement period. In France and in other OECD countries, the trend to have more individualized pension raises the question of the poverty during the retirement period.
In this context, could life insurances and private pension contracts avoid the risk of poverty ?
In this paper, we analyze the behaviour of life insurance holding in France, by using an
econometric model and studying statistically the risk of poverty among Retired.
