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We analyse the relationship between the application of specific measures for older employees (SMOE) and job duration of workers aged 40 and above. Using longitudinal employer-employee data for German establishments, we account for worker and establishment heterogeneity and correct for stock-sampling. We find a positive relation of mixed-aged team work to job duration and a negative relation of specific part-time addressed at older workers. Job duration does not appear to be related to other SMOE, such as training and specific equipment of workplaces. Our findings suggest that only certain specific measures for older employees alter employee retention.

In this study, we investigate the wealth decumulation decision from the perspective of a retiree who is averse to the prospect of fully annuitizing her accumulated savings. We field a large online survey of hypothetical product choices for phased drawdown offerings and annuities. While the demand for annuities remains low in our sample, we find significant demand for phased withdrawal products with equity-based asset allocations and flexible payout structures. Consistent with the product choice, the most important self-reported considerations for the wealth decumulation decision are low default risk in the products they purchase, the size of the withdrawal rates, and flexibility in the timing of their withdrawal. As determinants of the decision of how much wealth individuals are willing to draw down, we identify consumers' attitudes towards future economic conditions, the extent to which they are protected against longevity risk, and their desire to leave bequests. Policy implications are discussed.

This paper presents new empirical evidence on the effects of retirement benefits on labor force participation decisions. We use administrative data on the census of private sector employees in Austria and variation from mandated discontinuous changes in retirement benefits from the Austrian pension system. We present graphical evidence documenting labor supply responses to the policy discontinuities. Next, we develop nonparametric procedures to estimate labor supply elasticities based on the graphical evidence and mandated financial incentives. We estimate elasticities of 0.12 for men and 0.38 for women. These relatively low elasticities highlight that many retirement decisions are likely to be affected by factors beyond only financial incentives from retirement benefits.

This paper investigates changes in health behaviours upon retirement, using data drawn from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe. By exploiting changes in eligibility rules for early and statutory retirement, we identify the causal effect of retiring from work on smoking, alcohol drinking, engagement in physical activity and visits to the general practitioner or specialist. We provide evidence about individual heterogeneous effects related to gender, education, net wealth, early-life conditions and job characteristics. Our main results--obtained using fixed-effect two-stage least squares--show that changes in health behaviours occur upon retirement and may be a key mechanism through which the latter affects health. In particular, the probability of not practicing any physical activity decreases significantly after retirement, and this effect is stronger for individuals with higher education. We also find that different frameworks of European health care systems (i.e. countries with or without a gate-keeping system to regulate the access to specialist services) matter in shaping individuals' health behaviours after retirement. Our findings provide important information for the design of policies aiming to promote healthy lifestyles in later life, by identifying those who are potential target individuals and which factors may affect their behaviour. Our results also suggest the importance of policies promoting healthy lifestyles well before the end of the working life in order to anticipate the benefits deriving from individuals' health investments.

This paper examines how unemployment late in workers' careers affects the timing of their retirement. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation from 1996 to 2011, we document that unemployed workers permanently leave the labor force at a significantly higher rate than employed workers. This effect is stronger once workers become eligible for social security benefits and it is significantly dampened by the eligibility for unemployment insurance benefits. Unemployed workers, particularly those workers in households with below median wealth, also have a significantly higher social security uptake rate shortly after turning 62 than employed workers. We find little evidence for housing or stock market effects on the timing of retirement.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate with the help of econometric methods, how sensitive the labour supply of elderly is to the changes in the pension system. We first analyze how a hypothetical increase of pension eligibility age would influence the economic activity of such individuals. The results of the simulation model show that a 5-year increase of pension eligibility age (up to 65 years for men and 60 years for women) would lead to an increase of economic activity of those whom this reform will concern by 11-14 pct. We next analyze how elderly would react to the changes in the pension legislation, which came into force in the beginning of 2015, in particular, the possibility to defer retirement in order to receive a higher pension later. Our estimates show that this mechanism gives incentives to postpone retirement only for women, but not for men.

This article considers the potential relationship between providing care for grandchildren and retirement, among women nearing retirement age. Using 47,444 person-wave observations from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we find that the arrival of a new grandchild is associated with more than an 8 % increase in the retirement hazard despite little overall evidence of a care/retirement interaction. We document that although family characteristics seem to be the most important factors driving the care decision, they are also important determinants of retirement. In contrast, although financial incentives such as pensions and retiree health insurance have the largest influence on retirement, the opportunity cost associated with outside income seems to have little effect on whether a grandmother provides care. There is little evidence of substitution between caring for grandchildren versus providing care for elderly parents or engaging in volunteer activities; grandchild care is instead taken on as an additional responsibility. Our findings suggest that policies aimed at prolonging work life may need to consider grandchild care responsibilities as a countervailing factor, while those policies focused on grandchild care may also affect elderly labor force participation.

A tanulmány empirikusan elemzi a nyugdíjkorhatár emelésének azonnali foglalkoztatási hatását. Az általános korhatár születési évjáratokhoz és nemekhez kötődő és egyik évről a másikra élesen változó 1997 és 2009 közötti emelkedése teszi lehetővé az oksági kapcsolat hiteles vizsgálatát a különbségek különbsége módszerével. Az eredmények azt mutatják, hogy az előrehozott nyugdíjkorhatár változása jelentős hatást gyakorolt a női foglalkoztatásra: az átlagosan 45 százalékos foglalkoztatási arány mintegy 5-7,4 százalékponttal emelkedett. A korbetöltött nyugdíjazás esetében ilyen hatás nem figyelhető meg. Ennek oka az, hogy a rokkantnyugdíjazás növekedése ellensúlyozta az öregségi nyugdíj igénybevételének csökkenését.* Journal of Economics Literature (JEL) kód: H31, H55, J14, J26., The paper provides empirical evidence of the effect of changing the retirement age on employment. Based on individual data from Hungary, where the retirement age rose in a number of stages between 1997 and 2009, the analysis benefits from substantial variation in pension eligibility over a relatively short time. It takes a difference/indifference approach and is supported by independent variation in the age-based eligibility rule that contributes to causal identification of the effect. Results suggest that the effect of the changes in early retirement age is substantial, amounting to a 5-7.4 percentage point increase in the 45 per cent employment rate of retirement-age women. Changes in the normal retirement age do not seem to have such an employment effect, because they are counteracted by increases in disability pension claims.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of hiring and exit rates by age at the firm level and firm-level age segregation in hirings and separations in Finland.Design/methodology/approach– The use Finnish linked employer-employee data from 1990 to 2004. The authors present a decomposition of employment change by age group to disentangle the roles of hirings and exits from factors related to demographics effects. Firm-level analysis is conducted using regression models for the hiring rates and shares of different age groups and for the probability of hiring older employees. Similar models are estimated for the exits of older employees. Segregation is analysed using age segregation curves and Gini indices calculated from them.Findings– The hirings of older (50+) employees have clearly been more segregated at the firm level than the exits or the stock of old employees. Larger firms are more likely to hire older employees, but their hiring rates are lower. However, the probability of having hires or exits of older workers are much higher in large firms. The results are relatively similar for men and women.Research limitations/implications– The determinants of the probability of hiring older workers and the rate of hiring them, given that the rate is positive, are different and these two processes should be modelled separately. The Gini index of segregation may be misleading when the number of employees per firm is small. Therefore it is useful to compare segregation to a random reshuffle of employees to firms.Practical implications– Older worker who have become unemployed or who want to change their job need to have more employment opportunities. Labour and pension policies need to be monitored and designed so that there are more incentives for the individual to search for a new job and for the firms to hire older employees.Originality/value– The authors provide new empirical evidence of age segregation and hiring prospects of older employees. Age segregation has previously been examined in occupations, but the authors extend the analysis to firm-level segregation. The authors suggest a new decomposition of the rate of employment change to the hiring and exit rates and to a cohort effect.

Elderly individuals exhibit wide disparities in their sources of income. For those in the bottom half of the income distribution, Social Security is the most important source of support; program changes would directly affect their well-being. Income from private pensions, assets, and earnings are relatively more important for higher-income elderly individuals, who have more diverse income sources. The trend from private sector defined benefit to defined contribution pension plans has shifted responsibility for retirement security to individuals. A significant subset of the population is unlikely to be able to sustain their standard of living in retirement without higher pre-retirement saving.

This paper examines the impact of exposure to higher unemployment rates in the pre-retirement years on subsequent mortality. Although past research has found that recessions reduce contemporaneous mortality, these short-term effects may reverse over time, particularly for older workers. If workers experience an economic downturn in their late 50s, they may face several years of reduced employment and earnings before "retiring" when they reach Social Security eligibility at age 62. They also may experience lost health insurance, and therefore higher financial barriers to health care, through age 65, when Medicare becomes available. All of these experiences could contribute to weaker long-term health outcomes. To examine these hypotheses, we use Vital Statistics mortality data between 1969 and 2008 to generate age-specific cohort survival probabilities at older ages. We then link these survival probabilities to labor market conditions at earlier ages. We also use data from the 1980-2010 March Current Population Surveys and the 1991-2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys to explore potential mechanisms for this health effect. Our results indicate that experiencing a recession in one's late 50s leads to a reduction in longevity. We also find that this exposure leads to several years of reduced employment, health insurance coverage, and health care utilization which may contribute to the lower long-term likelihood of survival.

Groezen-Leers-Meijdam [2003] cikkéből kiindulva a lehető legegyszerűbben modellezzük a következő problémát: a kormányzat gyermektámogatási és nyugdíjrendszert működtetve serkenti a dolgozókat gyermekszülésre, és nyugdíjjal pótolja a "rövidlátó" dolgozók elégtelen megtakarítását. Bevezetjük a dolgozók hitelkorlátját, és kiterjesztjük a szerzőhármas elemzését heterogén nevelési költségekre és gyermektámogatásokra. Két fő eredményünk: 1. a transzferrendszer növelésekor át kell ugrani azt a szakadékot, amely a jólét kezdeti csökkenése miatt keletkezik; 2. bár a termékenységfüggő nyugdíjak bevezetése növeli az átlagos termékenységet, de csökkenti a társadalmi jólétet, és erősítheti a termékenység heterogenitását. Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) kód: D10, H55, J13, J14, J18, J26., Starting out from the study by Van Groezen, Leers and Meijdam (2003), the author analyses the following problem in the simplest possible model: the government operates family-support and pension systems to raise fertility and replace insufficient old-age saving of myopic workers respectively. Hungary imposes credit constraint on workers, and this paper extends the studys analysis to heterogeneous rearing costs and to enjoyment of having children. Two major results emerge. (i) Enlarging the transfer system involves jumping the gap created by the initial drop in welfare needs. (ii) Although the introduction of fertility-dependent pensions raises average fertility, it diminishes social welfare and may strengthen heterogeneity in fertility.

In seinem Kommentar nimmt Eckart Bomsdorf, Universität zu Köln, Stellung zu den Rentenreformplänen der Bundesregierung. Seiner Meinung nach enthält der Gesetzesentwurf sowohl Positives, z.B. bei der Erwerbsminderungsrente, als auch Widersprüchliches, z.B. bei der sogenannten Rente mit 63. Die volle Rentenkasse verführe zu Wohltaten. Vernachlässigt werde, dass die Belastungen für die Rentenversicherung dauerhaft seien, die in der Rentenkasse vorhandenen Ersparnisse jedoch nur einmal ausgegeben werden könnten.

Now, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, eastern and western German men are receiving similar state pensions, the main pillar in the system of old age provision in Germany. In contrast, the average pension paid to eastern German women far exceeds that of their western counterparts. A cohort comparison shows a narrowing of the gender gap when it comes to pension entitlements in eastern Germany. This decline is less a result of higher pension entitlements among eastern German women than a consequence of significant drops in pensions among eastern German men. In western Germany, however, the gender pension gap has remained consistently high throughout the cohort comparison. Western German women born in the baby boom years have only managed to narrow the gender gap to a limited extent despite their increasing labor participation. The present analysis first compares the development of average pension payments received by pensioners in eastern and western Germany who retired between 1993 and 2013. A cohort comparison analyzes the extent to which the existing East-West differences, particularly among women, are likely to continue into the future.

In recent years the problem of the increased number of pensioners and longer lifespan made motivation of elderly to work longer and retire later a very important objective in Russia. This article presents the results of the analysis of the factors that influence elderly's decision to retiree. For the purpose of this article the retirement was defined as elderly's decision to exit the labour market. It was determined that the most important factors are state of health, pension entitlement, labour income and marital status. Family factors (age difference between spouses, spouse's employment status and children below age of 15) were determined to be important for women only. Analysis showed that measures of stimulating elderly to work longer should be divided into two categories: 1) destimulation of labour market exit (psychological and legislative); 2) creation of conditions for voluntary extension of working life.

A tanulmány a magyarországi közszféra munkahelyi szintű adatain vizsgálja az idős és fiatal munkavállalók közötti kiszorítási hatást. Az elemzés újdonsága - a dezaggregált adatok használata mellett -, hogy a foglalkoztatotti csoportok munkahelyi foglalkoztatási szintjeit, a fiatalok felvételi esélyeit és béreit is elemzi. Az eredmények azt mutatják, hogy a fiatalokat sújtó kiszorítási hatás a foglalkoztatáson és a béreken keresztül is jelentkezik, de csak korlátozott mértékben, csupán a fiatalabb és legkisebb tapasztalattal rendelkezők esetében. Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) kód: J14, J23, J26, J45, J63., The study investigates the crowding-out effect among old and young workers in the Hungarian public sector, using job-level data. The analysis improves upon analyses based on aggregate data by considering levels of employment for various labour types and employment opportunities and wages for the young on the job level. Results indicate that the crowding out is realized through employment and wages as well, but is limited to the youngest and least experienced.

"In Germany, older unemployed people aged 58 or more years have been exempt from a fundamental principle of activating labour market policy until 2007: They have been entitled to unemployment benefit payments until taking up retirement pension without having to seek new employment (Section 428 of Social Code III). In light of the political goal of an increased labour market participation of older workers this paper deals with the reasons why the majority of older long-term unemployed people left the labour force by making use of the Facilitated Receipt of Benefits (FRB). Surveying the labour-market behaviour of this group against the background of the FRB diminishes a common methodological problem: unemployed benefit payment recipients usually must be available for employment; therefore questions about their inclination to work, their readiness to compromise and their job-search behaviour will probably lead to socially desirable answers. These distortions can be expected to be less relevant with FRB payment recipients, who are legally entitled to cease seeking employment. The empirical analysis based on a survey of recipients of the Unemployment Benefit II shows that low or no propensity to work was rarely the motive for leaving the labour market; in particular, those anticipating a low retirement income actually wanted to be re-employed. The vast majority gave three reasons for the decision to retire: an inability to cope with requirements of available jobs, a lack of job opportunities, and an absence of proper support from the public employment agency. Thus the withdrawal of older long-term unemployed people into pre-retirement cannot be attributed to a utility-maximising decision in favour of leisure and against gainful employment, but is the primary result of lacking re-employment prospects particularly for women in East Germany." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en)) Additional Information Hier finden Sie eine kurze Zusammenfassung.

We investigate the responsiveness of individual retirement decisions to changes in financial incentives. A reform increased women's normal retirement age (NRA) in two steps from age 62 to age 63 first and then to age 64. At the same time retirement at the previous NRA became possible at a benefit discount. Since the reform affected specific birth cohorts we can identify causal effects. We find strong and robust behavioral effects of changes in financial retirement incentives. A permanent reduction of retirement benefits by 3.4 percent induces a decline in the age-specific annual retirement probability by over 50 percent. The response to changes in financial retirement benefits varies with educational background: those with low education respond most strongly to an increase in the price of leisure.

We provide an explanation for the common finding that the effect of retirement on life satisfaction is negligible. For this we use subjective well-being measures for life and domains of life satisfaction that are available in the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and show that the effect of voluntary retirement on satisfaction with current household income is negative, while the effect on satisfaction with leisure is positive. At the same time, the effect on health satisfaction is positive but small. Following the life domain approach we then argue that these effects offset each other for an average individual and that therefore the overall effect is negligible. Furthermore, we show that it is important to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary retirement. The effect of involuntary retirement is negative because the adverse effect on satisfaction with household income is bigger, the favorable effect on satisfaction with leisure is smaller, and the effect on satisfaction with health is not significantly different from zero. These results turn out to be robust to using different identification strategies such as fixed effects and first differences estimation, as well as instrumental variables estimation using eligibility ages and plant closures as instruments for voluntary and involuntary retirement.

We analyze the employment effect of a law that provides for a 36 percent increase in the generosity of disability insurance (DI) for claimants who are, as a result of their lack of skills and of the labour market conditions they face, deemed unlikely to find a job. The selection process for treatment is therefore conditional on having a low probability of employment, making evaluation of its effect intrinsically difficult. We exploit the fact that the benefit increase is only available to individuals aged 55 or older, estimating its impact using a regression discontinuity approach. Our first results indicate a large drop in employment for disabled individuals who receive the increase in the benefit. Testing for the linearity of covariates around the eligibility age threshold reveals that the age at which individuals start claiming DI is not continuous: the benefit increase appears to accelerate the entry rate of individuals aged 55 or over. We obtain new estimates excluding this group of claimants, and find that the policy decreases the employment probability by 8 percent. We conclude that the observed DI generosity elasticity of 0.22 on labour market participation is mostly due to income effects since benefit receipt is not work contingent in the system studied.

This paper examines the effect of peers on an individual's likelihood of retirement using an administrative dataset of all retirement-eligible Los Angeles teachers for the years 1998–2001. We use two large unexpected pension reforms that differentially impacted financial incentives within and across schools to construct an instrument for others' retirement decisions. Controlling for individual and school characteristics, we find that the retirement of an additional teacher in the previous year at the same school increases a teacher's own likelihood of retirement by 1.5–2 percentage points. We then explore some possible mechanisms through which this effect operates. (JEL H75, I21, J14, J26, J45)

Con base en registros administrativos de la seguridad social estimamos indicadores de incentivos al retiro, en una muestra de hombres afiliados al mayor programa de seguridad social de Uruguay, y evaluamos su efecto en el retiro y la jubilación observados entre 1996 y 2004. En línea con los resultados estándar en la literatura, encontramos que la riqueza jubilatoria tiene un efecto positivo y altamente significativo en la probabilidad de retiro. Sin embargwrto, los indic'adores usuales de incentivos al retiro no pre¿sentan el efecto esp457erado. E'n algunas especificaciones los indicadores resultan no significativos y 0liu45en otras presentan el signo contrario al esperado.

Population ageing is a global phenomenon with long-term consequences on the economic development. Population is ageing as a result of two trends: people are living longer than they used to and are healthier and secondly the fertility rate has constantly decreased not only in the developed countries but also in developing ones. The ageing of the world's population is a matter of concern for everyone; the consequences are detectable on every aspect of life-for individual and for societies. The paper is examining the possible approaches to population ageing and aims to emphasize the economic behavior determinants that affect people's behavior during their life cycle.

This paper uses data from the Health and Retirement Study to explore the mechanism that underlies the robust relation found in the literature between cognitive ability, and in particular numeracy, and wealth, income constant. We have a number of findings. First, the more valuable the pension, the more knowledgeable are covered workers about their pensions. We suggest that causality is more likely to run from pension wealth to pension knowledge, rather than the other way around. Second, most measures of cognitive ability, including numeracy, are not significant determinants of pension and Social Security knowledge. Third, standardizing for incomes and other factors, a pension of higher value does not substitute for other forms of wealth. Rather, counting pensions in total wealth, those with more valuable pensions save more for retirement, other things the same. Fourth, there is no evidence that wealth held outside of pensions is influenced by knowledge of pensions. In sum, numeracy does not influence wealth in whole or in part by affecting financial knowledge of one's pension plan, where financial knowledge of the pension then influences other decisions about retirement saving. These findings raise questions about the mechanism that underlies the relation between cognition, especially numeracy, and wealth. From a policy perspective, they suggest that the numeracy-wealth relation should not be taken as evidence that increasing financial literacy will increase the wealth of households as they enter into retirement.

This paper assesses the impact of a dramatic reform of the Dutch pension system on mental health, savings behavior and retirement expectations of workers nearing retirement age. The reform means that public sector workers born on January 1, 1950 or later face a substantial reduction in their pension rights while workers born before this threshold date may still retire under the old, more generous rules. We employ a unique matched survey and administrative data set comprising male public sector workers born in 1949 and 1950 and find strong ex ante effects on mental health for workers who are affected by the reform. This effect increases as birth dates approach the threshold date. Furthermore, the effects differ in accordance with worker characteristics. Finally, we find that the response of those affected by the reform is to work longer and to save more.1.

In economies in which pension obligations are substantial, it is important that there is a high degree of trust in the financial reporting of pensions by employers and by pension plans. The objective of this paper is to assess legal considerations regarding the introduction and implement of financial transaction tax mechanisms in private pension system. In line with this objective, an understanding of causes, implications, solutions for pensions is essential to being able to efficiently and effectively create a secure fiscal environment.

RÉSUMÉNous analysons un grand fichier de données longitudinales des déclarations de revenus pour les individus canadiens, en appliquant une procédure de détermination de la retraite, qui est basé sur le revenu d’emploi, afin de évaluer qui se sont retirés et comment ils réussissent à maintenir leurs revenus après la retraite. Cette approche méthodologique peut être d’interêt pour une application éventuelle dans d’autres pays qui ont des données appropriées. Nos principales conclusions sont les suivants. En premier, dans les deux ans qui suivent le départ en retraite, les ratios de remplacement du revenu après taxes atteignent en moyenne environ deux- tiers lorsqu’ils sont calculés sur tous les âges de départ en retraite. Deuxièmement, les ratios ont tendance à augmenter avec l’âge de la retraite. Troisièmement, les ratios augmentent avec les anneés de la retraite, du moins dans les premières années. Enfin, les ratios de remplacement du revenu sont les plus élevés pour le quartile des revenu les plus bas et diminuent généralement à mesure que le revenu augmente ; avec chaque quartile, les taux de remplacement augmentent davantage pour ceux qui ont pris leur retraite plus tard que pour ceux qui l’ont prise plus tôt.

This paper describes how a child allowance policy and income transfer to older people policy alter fertility and economic growth under a pay-as-you-go pension system. Moreover, this paper presents ways to finance such policies: one for income taxation and the other for consumption tax. The results presented in this paper are as follows. First, the relation between fertility and economic growth depends on fertility. This relation is positive if fertility is at a certain level. However, if fertility is low or high, this relation is negative. Second, a child allowance does not always raise the fertility rate. On the other hand, income transfer to older people raises the fertility rate. This result underscores that it is important to consider policies for older people when considering how to raise the fertility rate. Income transfer to older people financed by consumption taxation can achieve two goals: increasing fertility in a society with fewer children, and providing income security for older people.

In Japan, retirement is a gradual process that transpires over a particularly long period of time. Using large scale micro-level datasets from the Survey of Employment of the Elderly compiled by the Japanese government, we provide some stylized facts on the development of retirement behavior since the 1980s and explore factors affecting the individual retirement decision. First, we observed a general declining trend in the proportion of retired individuals aged 55-59 (especially females) while the proportion of retired individuals aged 65-69 (especially males) increased. Second, the survival analysis on actual retirement age shows that males who worked as an expert/technician or manager before retirement or individuals receiving a larger public pension income are likely to retire earlier. Third, another survival analysis on expected retirement age shows that workers with lower job satisfaction in terms of rewards and males with a larger family size are more likely to retire earlier.

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIESTHE ROLE OF FINANCIAL LITERACY IN DETERMINING RETIREMENT PLANSRobert ClarkMelinda Sandler MorrillSteven G. AllenWorking Paper 16612http://www.nber.org/papers/w16612NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH1050 Massachusetts AvenueCambridge, MA 02138December 2010This research is funded, in part, by a grant from FINRA Investor Education Foundation. We wouldlike to thank Jennifer Maki, Mehtab Randhawa, and Evan Rogers for their research assistance. Theresearch could not have been accomplished without the cooperation of the companies that partneredwith us. We would also like to thank Nicholas Horsewood, Annamaria Lusardi, Olivia Mitchell, andtwo anonymous referees for useful comments. All remaining errors are our own. The views expressedherein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of EconomicResearch, FINRA Investor Education Foundation, or any of its affiliated companies.© 2010 by Robert Clark, Melinda Sandler Morrill, and Steven G. Allen. All rights reserved. Shortsections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission providedthat full credit, including © notice, is given to the source.

Due to a rising life expectancy and a shrinking labor force, there is an increasing societal need to employ elder people. This will also be possible in Germany. This is not only supported by the fact that work participation of the elderly is still low in an international comparison. It is even more important that governmental early retirement schemes were practically abolished, age discrimination of companies have decreased and the labor force participation has significantly increased beyond demographic factors due to a rising desire to work. This is supported by a structural change in the relevance of professions from those requiring physical efforts to those requiring high qualifications, both of which encourages old-age work. Wegen der zunehmenden Lebenszeit und der Schrumpfung der Arbeitsbevolkerung steigt kunftig der Bedarf fur Altere im Arbeitsmarkt. Eine starkere Nutzung des Humankapitals der Alteren wird auch in Deutschland moglich sein. Dafur spricht nicht nur, dass die Erwerbsquoten im internationalen Vergleich noch gering sind. Wichtig ist vielmehr, dass staatliche Anreize zur Fruhverrentung weitgehend abgestellt wurden, die Altersdiskriminierung durch Unternehmen zuruckgeht und die Erwerbstatigkeit uber die rein demografischen Faktoren hinaus wegen einer deutlich zunehmenden Erwerbsneigung kraftig angestiegen ist. Diese Entwicklung wird auch dadurch unterstutzt, dass ein Strukturwandel von Berufen, die mit korperlicher Anstrengung verbunden sind, zu solchen mit hohen Qualifikationsanforderungen erfolgt, was Arbeit im Alter begunstigt.

The interval in time between leaving a career job and exit from the labor force is especially long for Japanese employees and separation from the career job often takes place due to mandatory retirement in Japan. Using micro-level data compiled by the Japanese Government, we examine determinants of post-career work arrangements from two perspectives: work status and the route to a second job. We show that these determinants differ between male and female workers and that the customary function of career employers to place their workers in a second job has declined since the middle of the 1990s.

This paper investigates the effect of the current recession on the retirement age population. Data from the Health and Retirement Study suggest that those approaching retirement age (early boomers ages 53 to 58 in 2006) have only 15.2 percent of their wealth in stocks, held directly or in defined contribution plans or IRAs. Their vulnerability to a stock market decline is limited by the high value of their Social Security wealth, which represents over a quarter of the total household wealth of the early boomers. In addition, their defined contribution plans remain immature, so their defined benefit plans represent sixty five percent of their pension wealth. Simulations with a structural retirement model suggest the stock market decline will lead the early boomers to postpone their retirement by only 1.5 months on average. Health and Retirement Study data also show that those approaching retirement are not likely to be greatly or immediately affected by the decline in housing prices. We end with a discussion of important difficulties facing those who would use labor market policies to increase the employment of older workers.

Population ageing and growing deficit of Russian pension system place on the agenda an issue of increasing pension age. The article reviews international practices of regulating pension ages. Authors critically discuss the pros and cons of increasing pension ages in Russia from perspectives of demographic situation and trends, labor market, pension system and public attitudes toward this issue. They prove necessity of the effective pension age increasing in Russia and present their views on how this policy should be organized.

This paper uses the receipt of an inheritance to measure the effect of wealth shocks on retirement. Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we first document that inheritance receipt is common among older workers %u2013 one in five households receives an inheritance over an eight-year period, with a median value of about $30,000. We find that inheritance receipt is associated with a significant increase in the probability of retirement. In particular, we find that receiving an inheritance increases the probability of retiring earlier than expected by 4.4 percentage points, or 12 percent relative to the baseline retirement rate, over an eight-year period. Importantly, this effect is stronger when the inheritance is unexpected and thus more likely to represent an exogenous shock to wealth.

The demographic reality and the changes of population compositions, families and communities from the urban and, respectively, the rural area contain several challenges for reconfiguring the social policies in the future. This study proposes an approach of the Romanian social policy in the context of ageing, of changes and risks it generates from the lifecycle perspective. First, the main arguments are reviewed that motivate such an approach by highlighting the modification trends of risks and opportunities during the individuals’ lifetime. Next, an analysis is realised with respect to the opportunities of adjusting the social policy to the risks associated to the main stages of the lifecycle: years of growing and learning (childhood and adolescence); the period of forming families and the working life years; the post-active period. A special emphasis is laid on taking into account the differences between men and women. The study contains recommendations for policies oriented on diminishing the risks during the lifecycle in the context of ageing.

Dans la lignee des travaux de Briard (2006) et de Barnay (2005), cette contribution s’interesse aux assures du Regime general partis en retraite avec une duree d’assurance insuffisante pour pretendre au taux plein (157 trimestres pour les assures nes en 1940) et qui sont donc susceptibles de subir une decote de leur pension s’ils ne sont pas reconnus inaptes ou invalides, et partent en retraite avant l’âge de 65 ans. L’etude s’interesse precisement a deux episodes auxquels peuvent etre confrontes les assures lors de la liquidation de leurs droits a la retraite/ Dans un premier temps, une decision administrative de reconnaissance de l’inaptitude et/ou de l’invalidite permet un depart en retraite a taux plein du salarie des 60 ans, sans decision de sa part au sens d’un arbitrage entre travail et loisir ; dans un second temps, au-dela de 60 ans, pour les salaries qui n’ont pas encore liquide leurs droits a la retraite, se pose le choix entre l’obtention d’une pension a taux reduit et une pension a taux plein a l’âge 65 ans ; qui, dans ce cas, peut etre apparente a un modele classique d’offre de travail ou l’agent est acteur de sa decision.

Media and other accounts of life after retirement suggest it to be “The Golden Years” of life, when the elderly have true leisure in the classic sense of freedom from responsibilities of work. However, like earlier time-diary studies, data from the 2003-07 Americans Time Use Project (ATUS) indicate that the great majority of seniors’ extra 20+ hours of free time is concentrated on three activities – TV, reading and rest. Only a few more hours are spent on sleep. Despite reports of increased work time among seniors, relatively few of those in Andy’s new age bracket remain in the labor force and they work fewer hours.

Global aging will impose greater economic demands on the young and may entail dramatic consumption shortfalls for the old. Against this gloomy backdrop, many analysts hail the world's funded pension systems as a means to protect future retirement security. The monographs reviewed ask how funded pension plans might be restructured to better meet the policy challenges of global aging. Both show that the pension institution must be reformulated to better provide for both economic growth and demographic aging. Questions remain regarding how retirement policy can better integrate intergenerational adequacy and incentive considerations.

Beyond its negative impact on the employment rate of elder workers, we show in this paper that a short distance to the retirement age explains also the low investment in training. This supports the policies enlarging the retirement age: an increase of the incentive to delay the retirement age not only leads to an raise of the employment rate of elderly but also to promote a better training, upgrading of labor enhances the gains of working. An original equilibrium search model with both endogenous retirement and human capital investment choices gives the theoretical foundation whereas an estimation based an French labor survey provides some empirical support to our approach. Classification JEL : J14, J24, J26, I20

We analyse the effects of pension reforms on the planned retirement age of women by exploiting within country variation in pension wealth across cohorts of workers in Italy after the Amato and Dini reforms of the early 1990s, which introduced a "Notionally Defined Contribution" (NDC) method for calculating pension benefits. The effect of the change in the pension regime on retirement decisions is affected by the presence of gaps in careers of women. Binding constraints related to eligibility to pensions indeed reduce the responsiveness of women to changes in pension rules. This explains why, contrary to a priori expectations, men are often found to be more reactive than women to changes in pension rules.

This paper examines the incentive effects of market and household work on retirement. This is accomplished by documenting the time use in market and household work in selected European countries. The assignment of an economic value to household work assumes substitutability of market and household work of some degree. With continuous lifetime patterns, household work may also replace market work after retirement. We construct re-placement rates and option values that include the value of household work for 7 European countries. It is shown that the inclusion of household work in calculations on incentives makes the prospect of retiring more attractive, and that the calculation results correlate with actual retirement ages in Europe. Replacement rates are close to or exceed 100% when household work is accounted for. For men the increase in household work after withdrawing from the labour market is larger in relative terms (double on average). Therefore the effect of accounting for household work in the financial incentive to retire is greater for men.

Während die Zahl der Erwerbstätigen unter 50 Jahren in den letzten Jahren abgenommen hat und erst mit dem gegenwärtigen Konjunkturaufschwung wieder anzieht, ist die Beschäftigung der Älteren seit 1998 stetig und deutlich gewachsen - und zwar um 1,5 Mill. Das gilt sowohl für die sozialversicherungspflichtig Beschäftigten und die geringfügig Tätigen als auch für die Beamten. Die Zahl der älteren Selbständigen ist ebenfalls gestiegen. Entsprechend hat sich die Struktur der Erwerbstätigen hin zu den Älteren verschoben und der auf diese Gruppe entfallende Anteil des Arbeitsvolumens wächst. Deutlich zugenommen hat auch die Bereitschaft der Älteren, eine Erwerbstätigkeit auszuüben. Das gilt vor allem für Personen ab 55 Jahren. Die gestiegene Erwerbsbeteiligung der Älteren rührt in starkem Maße daher, dass sich das Qualifikationsniveau in dieser Altersgruppe im Zuge des Nachrückens bildungsstarker Kohorten verbessert hat, und Personen mit einem höheren Ausbildungsabschluss mehr dazu neigen, am Erwerbsleben teilzunehmen, als solche mit einer geringeren Qualifikation. Der Anstieg des Qualifikationsniveaus ist Ausdruck der ab Mitte der 60er Jahre verstärkten Bildungsanstrengungen; die danach Ausgebildeten wachsen immer mehr in die älteren Jahrgänge der Erwerbstätigen hinein. Dieser Trend wird sich in den nächsten Jahren noch verstärken, und die Zahl der jüngeren Erwerbspersonen wird weiter zurückgehen. Deshalb sollte die Förderung von Frühverrentung eingestellt und das Humankapital der im Schnitt älter werdenden Arbeitnehmer weiterentwickelt werden. Unternehmen müssen sich mit einer vorausschauenden Personalpolitik auf diese Entwicklung einstellen.

This paper studies the effect of one spouse’s retirement on the Retirement of the other using a Norwegian early reform, which reduced the retirement age for workers in selected firms. The findings indicate that after the reform, the spouses of those who could retire earlier were less likely to remain in the workforce compared to the spouses of those who were not included in the early retirement scheme. This finding is compatible with preferences for shared spousal leisure. Contrary to previous findings, wives respond to husbands’ early retirement decisions. However, the findings are less conclusive with respect to husbands’ response to wives’ early retirement decisions. An investigation of the responding wives’ labor market exit strategy reveals that the reform increased their likelihood of retiring with a disability pension, representing a cost to public finance incurred in addition to the general retirement costs. This study contributes to other recent evidence on the influence of of non-health-related factors on the use of disability benefits among older workers.