IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_7165.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Politics of Aging and Retirement: Evidence from Swiss Referenda

Author

Listed:
  • Piera Bello
  • Vincenzo Galasso

Abstract

Aging creates financial troubles for PAYG pension systems, since the share of retirees to workers increases. An often advocated policy response is to increase retirement age. Ironically, however, the political support for this policy may actually be hindered by population aging. Using Swiss administrative voting data at municipal level (and individual survey data) from pension reforms referenda, we show in fact that individuals close to retirement tend to oppose policies that postpone retirement, whereas young and elderly individuals are more favorable. The current process of population aging, and the associated increase in the size of the cohort of individuals close to retirement, may partially explain why a pension reform, which increased retirement age for females, was approved in two referenda in 1995 and 1998, while a reform, which proposed a similar increase in female retirement age, was defeated in a 2017 referendum.

Suggested Citation

  • Piera Bello & Vincenzo Galasso, 2018. "The Politics of Aging and Retirement: Evidence from Swiss Referenda," CESifo Working Paper Series 7165, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7165
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp7165.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tito Boeri & Guido Tabellini, 2012. "Does information increase political support for pension reform?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 150(1), pages 327-362, January.
    2. Monika Buetler & Michel André Maréchal, 2007. "Framing Effects in Political Decision Making: Evidence from a Natural Voting Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 1940, CESifo.
    3. Marco Buti & Alessandro Turrini & Paul Noord & Pietro Biroli, 2009. "Defying the ‘Juncker curse’: can reformist governments be re-elected?," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 36(1), pages 65-100, February.
    4. Monika Bütler, 2002. "The Political Feasibility of Increasing the Retirement Age: Lessons from a Ballot on the Female Retirement Age," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 9(4), pages 349-365, August.
    5. Tito Boeri & Axel Boersch-Supan & Guido Tabellini, 2002. "Pension Reforms and the Opinions of European Citizens," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 396-401, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ahlfeldt, Gabriel M. & Maennig, Wolfgang & Mueller, Steffen Q., 2022. "The generation gap in direct democracy: Age vs. cohort effects," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    2. Sonja Feer & Oliver Lipps & Julia Dratva & Isabel Baumann, 2022. "Health and labor force participation among older workers in Switzerland: a growth curve analysis," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 1395-1406, December.
    3. Cetin, Sefane & Hindriks, Jean, 2023. "Sustainability of pension reforms: An EU-wide political stress," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2023016, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    4. Ben Brewer & Karen Smith Conway & Jonathan C. Rork, 2022. "Do income tax breaks for the elderly affect economic growth?," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 40(1), pages 7-27, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Elsa Fornero, 2015. "Economic-financial Literacy and (Sustainable) Pension Reforms: Why the Former is a Key Ingredient for the Latter," Bankers, Markets & Investors, ESKA Publishing, issue 134, pages 6-16, January-F.
    2. Benjamin Bittschi & Berthold U. Wigger, 2019. "On the Political Feasibility of Increasing the Legal Retirement Age," CESifo Working Paper Series 7492, CESifo.
    3. Beatrice Scheubel & Daniel Schunk & Joachim Winter, 2009. "Don't Raise the Retirement Age! An Experiment on Opposition to Pension Reforms and East-West Differences in Germany," CESifo Working Paper Series 2752, CESifo.
    4. Jante Parlevliet, 2017. "What drives public acceptance of reforms? Longitudinal evidence from a Dutch pension reform," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 1-23, October.
    5. Hayo, Bernd & Ono, Hiroyuki, 2010. "Comparing public attitudes toward providing for the livelihood of the elderly in two aging societies: Germany and Japan," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 72-80, January.
    6. Najat El Mekkaoui de Freitas & Bérangère Legendre, 2014. "Constitution d’un revenu complémentaire de retraite : quels sont les facteurs déterminants?," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 472(1), pages 153-167.
    7. Ju. A. Zelikova, 2022. "Social Justice and Social Reform under Condition of Population Aging. Systematic Literature Review," Administrative Consulting, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. North-West Institute of Management., issue 1.
    8. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:10:y:2008:i:2:p:1-8 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Stiftung Familienunternehmen (ed.), 2012. "Der Weg zu einer "Agenda 2030": Reformen zwischen objektiver Notwendigkeit und individueller Verweigerung," ZEW Expertises, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, number 110562, June.
    10. Beatrice Magistro, 2022. "The influence of financial and economic literacy on policy preferences in Italy," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(2), pages 351-381, July.
    11. Arij Lans Bovenberg, 2008. "Grey New World: Europe on the Road to Gerontocracy?," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo Group, vol. 54(1), pages 55-72, March.
    12. De Santis Gustavo, 2024. "Demography, Economy and Policy Choices: The Three Corners of the Pension Conundrum," Statistics, Politics and Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 15(2), pages 169-200.
    13. repec:dau:papers:123456789/11272 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Alessandro Bucciol & Luca Zarri, 2013. "Lying in Politics: Evidence from the US," Working Papers 22/2013, University of Verona, Department of Economics.
    15. Hanel, Barbara & Riphahn, Regina T., 2012. "The timing of retirement — New evidence from Swiss female workers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 718-728.
    16. Baghdasaryan, Vardan & Iannantuoni, Giovanna & Maggian, Valeria, 2019. "Electoral fraud and voter turnout: An experimental study," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 203-219.
    17. Patricia Funk, 2012. "How accurate are surveyed preferences for public policies? Evidence from a unique institutional setup," Economics Working Papers 1334, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Nov 2013.
    18. Larch, Martin & Van den Noord, Paul & Jonung, Lars, 2010. "The stability and growth pact: lessons from the great recession," MPRA Paper 27900, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. J. Ignacio Conde-Ruiz & Paola Profeta, "undated". "What Social Security: Beveridgean or Bismarckian?," Working Papers 2003-16, FEDEA.
    20. Julian Diaz Saavedra, 2013. "Age-dependent Taxation, Retirement Behavior, and Work Hours Over the Life Cycle," ThE Papers 13/09, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    21. Feld, Lars P. & Fischer, Justina A.V. & Kirchgaessner, Gebhard, 2007. "The Effect of Direct Democratic Institutions on Income Redistribution: Evidence for Switzerland," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 689, Stockholm School of Economics.
    22. Heinemann, Friedrich & Hennighausen, Tanja & Moessinger, Marc-Daniel, 2011. "Intrinsic work motivation and pension reform acceptance," ZEW Discussion Papers 11-045, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social security reforms; voting behavior; retirement age;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7165. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.