In France, a child is more than twice as likely to be poor as a retiree. The poverty rate for children is 22.4%. For retirees it's 10.4%. Those are the government's own numbers. Walter Russell Mead put them at the center of his Global View column on Tuesday, Oct. 20. The riots in France on Oct. 17 and 18 had many causes. He says one of them is age.
Mead counts the youth revolts. In 2024 young protesters drove out Bangladesh's prime minister and shook Serbia's establishment. In 2025 it was Nepal, Madagascar, Morocco and Peru. Now it's France's riots and a protest movement in India. India's economy is projected to grow 7.1%. Mead says even that isn't enough for young Indians who want the lives they see on their screens. Meanwhile the old hang on at the top. Warren Buffett stepped down at 96. Other famous founders in their seventies and eighties are still at their desks.
France's money fight is the clearest. Pensions took 24.3% of public spending in 2025, by the Pensions Advisory Council. The Finance Ministry says 32% of the Education Ministry's proposed 2027 budget goes to pension payments. The median age in France was 41.6 in 2024, and the population is projected to shrink. Mead's line is that French boomers “cling to the keys to the treasury.” He goes on to prescribe his own fixes. That's his opinion, and we leave it with him.
Fewer workers for each retiree
Mary Anastasia O'Grady's Monday column adds the other half. She cites a paper by economists Jesús Fernández-Villaverde and Patrick Norrick. As of 2026 the world is likely below replacement fertility, the birth rate a population needs to hold steady. That has never happened before. Unless trends change, world population peaks near 9 billion around 2056 and then falls. The drop is concentrated in low- and middle-income countries. The old pattern of poorer countries having more children has flipped. Mexico's fertility rate was 1.51 in 2025. That's likely below some groups in the U.S., even though Mexico's income per person is only about 28% of ours. Colombia's rate is 1.01. Brazil's is 1.52. Subsidies for having children, tried in places like Italy, haven't worked. The authors guess at the cause. Modern life “makes the third child expensive and childlessness cheap.” O'Grady's bottom line is plain. A welfare state that counts on the young to fund pensions and healthcare isn't sustainable.
Our read
This is a Retirement · M10 story, and it's for every teacher, nurse and county worker we serve. A pension promise rests on three legs. Workers paying in. The fund's investments. And a government willing to tax or borrow to cover any gap. France shows what happens when the first leg thins and the third leg gets expensive. Pensions take a bigger slice of the budget every year, until the young push back. We're not forecasting that for California. Public pensions here have strong legal protection. But fewer workers per retiree strains pension math everywhere, even in funded plans. It moves slowly, which is exactly why people ignore it.
Here's the check this week. Pull up your pension plan's latest annual report and find its funded ratio, the share of promised benefits it already has the money for. Write that number next to the balance of your own retirement account at work. The pension is a promise someone else keeps. Your own account is the leg you control, and it gets stronger every time you raise your contribution. Know both numbers before the next budget fight, not after. Bring them to your next review, and we'll look at them side by side.