Retirement: France exceptionalism

If you follow the news, you’ve heard about the constant wave of strikes against the proposed reform of retirement rules in my home country.

There are currently 42 different pension regimes available that vary widely in terms of both how pensions are calculated and what age workers can retire at.

Officially, the country's retirement age is 62, but many people with “special regimes” such as train or metro drivers can retire much earlier, in some cases at the age of 55.

If you compare France retirement age on the table with that of other countries, you can see that my countrymen have a sweet deal compared to most of the other European and North American nations, and then, you might wonder, what are they complaining about?