|
on Economics of Ageing |
| By: | Didier Blanchet (INSEE institut national de la statistique et des études économiques); Thierry Debrand (IRDES institut for research and information in health economics) |
| Abstract: | Individual preferences concerning retirement age are strongly differentiated both within and between countries. According to the Share survey, the proportion of workers aged from 50 to 65 who wished to retire as soon as possible in 2004 ranged from 31% in the Netherlands to 67% in Spain. Such a preference for early retirement can depend on both financial and non financial factors. Non financial factors include working conditions, health status and mortality expectations. Economic or "monetary" factors essentially correspond to the magnitude of pension entitlements and how they depend upon retirement age. Entitlements that depend positively on retirement age should reduce the motivation to retire as soon as possible. This paper compares the role of these different factors by combining individual data from the Share survey with macroeconomic indicators of pension entitlements recently produced by the OECD. Health and work conditions come out as strong determinants of the preference for early retirement. Being generally satisfied with one's work leads to a drop of approximately 16 percentage points in the probability of wishing to retire as soon as possible. Declaring oneself in bad or very bad health has a positive effect on this probability of a comparable order of magnitude. However, these non financial factors do not significantly contribute to the explanation of cross-country differentials. Conversely, financial factors seem to have a lower impact at micro-level, but a higher one for the explanation of cross-country differentials. |
| Keywords: | Retirement, Monetary factor, Health, Job satisfaction |
| JEL: | J28 I10 J26 |
| Date: | 2008–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irh:wpaper:dt13&r=age |
| By: | Norma B. Coe; Gema Zamarro |
| Abstract: | What are the health impacts of retirement? As talk of raising retirement ages in pensions and social security schemes continues around the world, it is important to know both the costs and benefits for the individual as well as government budgets. The authors use the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) dataset to address this question in a multicountry setting. Statutory retirement ages clearly induce retirement, but are not related to an individual's health. The authors find significant evidence that retirement has a health-preserving effect on overall general health but no evidence that retiring at younger ages has a health-preserving effect. |
| Keywords: | retirement, health, behaviors |
| JEL: | I10 J26 C21 |
| Date: | 2008–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ran:wpaper:588&r=age |
| By: | Salm, M |
| Abstract: | I use longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study to estimate the effect of job loss on health for near elderly employees. Job loss is a major cause of economic insecurity for working age individuals, and can cause reduction in income, and loss of health insurance. To control for possible reverse causality, this study focuses on people who were laid off for an exogenous reason - the closure of their previous employers’ business. I find that the unemployed are in worse health than employees, and that health reasons are a common cause of job termination. In contrast, I find no causal effect of exogenous job loss on various measures of health. This suggests that the inferior health of the unemployed compared to the employed could be explained by reverse causality. I also use instrumental variable regression to estimate the effect of loss of health insurance, loss of income, and re-employment on health, and again find no statistically significant effects. |
| Date: | 2008–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:yor:hectdg:08/16&r=age |
| By: | Henri Bogaert |
| Abstract: | The long-term demographic projections have progressively raised concerns about the consequences of ageing population. To better understand those changes and measure their size,projections of social expenditure have been built and progressively refined. Confronted with a large budgetary cost of ageing in the long run, the Government's alternative is: solve the problemwhen it comes up or try to anticipate the negative results and prevent them. Three ways are to be considered that are not mutually incompatible: reforming the social system in order to reduce the cost for the present and future generations, increasing the tax or contribution receipts by pushing up employment rates and the trend growth of GDP and saving now in the public sector to cover the increase of the future expenditure. The paper shows that, since the end of the nineties, a broad movement of reforms has taken place in the EU which involves this three-pronged strategy. |
| JEL: | H55 J18 J26 |
| Date: | 2008–01–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fpb:wpaper:0802&r=age |