IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/usg/dp2006/2006-08.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Institutional Determinants of Early Retirement in Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Justina A.V. Fischer
  • Alfonso Sousa-Poza

Abstract

Low fertility rates combined with increases in early retirement pose a serious challenge to the sustainability of social security systems in most industrialized countries. Therefore, it is important for policy makers to understand the determinants of early retirement and especially the role that institutional factors play in the retirement decision. However, analyzing such factors ideally requires international microdata, which have in the past been largely unavailable. To fill this void, this paper investigates early retirement determinants across several European countries using the rich 2005 SHARE (Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe) microdataset, which produces more precise estimates of the effects of institutional and economic factors like pension systems, unemployment, and employment protection legislation. The analysis shows that pension systems offering generous early retirement options encourage early departure from the labor market. In addition, pension wealth accrual rate exerts a greater influence on early retirement decisions than does the average replacement rate, while stricter employment protection legislation has no significant impact.

Suggested Citation

  • Justina A.V. Fischer & Alfonso Sousa-Poza, 2006. "The Institutional Determinants of Early Retirement in Europe," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2006 2006-08, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    • Handle: RePEc:usg:dp2006:2006-08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/dp2006/DP08_Fi.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Monika Bütler & Olivia Huguenin & Federica Teppa, 2004. "What Triggers Early Retirement. Results from Swiss Pension Funds," CeRP Working Papers 35, Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies, Turin (Italy).
    2. Espen Bratberg & Tor Helge Holmås & Øystein Thøgersen, 2004. "Assessing the effects of an early retirement program," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 17(3), pages 387-408, August.
    3. Gary S. Fields & Olivia S. Mitchell, 1984. "Economic Determinants of the Optimal Retirement Age: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 19(2), pages 245-262.
    4. Sveinbjörn Blöndal & Stefano Scarpetta, 1999. "The Retirement Decision in OECD Countries," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 202, OECD Publishing.
    5. Peracchi, Franco & Welch, Finis, 1994. "Trends in Labor Force Transitions of Older Men and Women," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(2), pages 210-242, April.
    6. Pozzebon, Silvana & Mitchell, Olivia S, 1989. "Married Women's Retirement Behavior," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 2(1), pages 39-53.
    7. Edward C. Norton & Hua Wang & Chunrong Ai, 2004. "Computing interaction effects and standard errors in logit and probit models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 4(2), pages 154-167, June.
    8. Stern, Steven, 1987. "Promotion and Optimal Retirement," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(4), pages 107-123, October.
    9. Jonathan Gruber & David Wise, 2005. "Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: Fiscal Implications, Introduction and Summary," NBER Working Papers 11290, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Knut Røed & Fredrik Haugen, 2003. "Early Retirement and Economic Incentives: Evidence from a Quasi‐natural Experiment," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 17(2), pages 203-228, June.
    11. Jonathan Gruber & David A. Wise, 2004. "Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: Micro-Estimation," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number grub04-1.
    12. Avner Ahituv & Joseph Zeira, 2011. "Technical Progress and Early Retirement," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(551), pages 171-193, March.
    13. Richard L. Johnson, 2001. "Effects of old-age insurance on female retirement : evidence from cross-country time-series data," Research Working Paper RWP 01-08, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    14. Romain Duval, 2003. "The Retirement Effects of Old-Age Pension and Early Retirement Schemes in OECD Countries," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 370, OECD Publishing.
    15. David Dorn & Alfonso Sousa-Poza, 2005. "The Determinants of Early Retirement in Switzerland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 141(II), pages 247-283, June.
    16. Ai, Chunrong & Norton, Edward C., 2003. "Interaction terms in logit and probit models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 123-129, July.
    17. Stern, Steven, 1994. "Ability, Promotion, and Optimal Retirement," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 12(1), pages 119-137, January.
    18. Ana Ferrer & Stéphanie Lluis, 2008. "Should Workers Care about Firm Size?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 62(1), pages 104-125, October.
    19. Moulton, Brent R, 1990. "An Illustration of a Pitfall in Estimating the Effects of Aggregate Variables on Micro Unit," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 72(2), pages 334-338, May.
    20. Jonathan Gruber & David A. Wise, 1999. "Social Security and Retirement around the World," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number grub99-1.
    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. Ronald Hagan & Andrew M. Jones & Nigel Rice, 2009. "Health and Retirement in Europe," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 6(10), pages 1-20, October.
    2. Carmen Petrovici & Jörg Neugschwender, 2014. "Who can (still) afford to retire early? Cross-country comparison of incomes of senior workers and young retirees using LIS data for 2007 & 2010," LIS Working papers 608, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    3. Ashok Thomas & Luca Spataro, 2013. "Pension funds and Market Efficiency: A review," Discussion Papers 2013/164, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    4. Brenda Gannon & Jennifer Roberts, 2011. "Part-time work and health among older workers in Ireland and Britain," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(30), pages 4749-4757.
    5. Ronald Wipplinger & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2007. "Pensionszugang in Österreich im internationalen Vergleich," Economics working papers 2007-07, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    6. Sergi Jiménez Martín & Judit Vall Castello, 2009. "Business Cycle Effects on Labour Force Transitions for Older People in Spain," Working Papers 2009-25, FEDEA.
    7. Freudenberg, Christoph & Laub, Natalie & Sutor, Tim, 2018. "Pension decrement rates across Europe – Are they too low?," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 12(C), pages 35-45.
    8. Monika Riedel & Helmut Hofer, 2013. "Determinants of the Transition from Work into Retirement," NRN working papers 2013-10, The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    9. Sascha Breij & Martijn Huisman & Dorly J. H. Deeg, 2020. "Educational differences in macro-level determinants of early exit from paid work: a multilevel analysis of 14 European countries," European Journal of Ageing, Springer, vol. 17(2), pages 217-227, June.
    10. Ellen Jaldestad & Andrea Eriksson & Philip Blom & Britt Östlund, 2021. "Factors Influencing Retirement Decisions among Blue-Collar Workers in a Global Manufacturing Company—Implications for Age Management from A System Perspective," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(20), pages 1-22, October.
    11. Ulrike Huemer & Kristina Budimir & Rainer Eppel, 2010. "Soziale Sicherungssysteme und Arbeitsmarktperformanz in der EU. Mikroökonometrische Analyse," WIFO Studies, WIFO, number 41154.
    12. Sergi Jimenez-Martin & Judit Castello, 2013. "Business cycle and spillover effects on pre-retirement behavior in Spain," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-23, December.
    13. Monika Riedel & Helmut Hofer & Birgit Wögerbauer, 2015. "Determinants for the transition from work into retirement in Europe," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-19, December.

    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. David Dorn & Alfonso Sousa-Poza, 2005. "Early Retirement: Free Choice or Forced Decision," CESifo Working Paper Series 1542, CESifo.
    2. David Dorn & Alfonso Sousa-Poza, 2010. "'Voluntary' and 'involuntary' early retirement: an international analysis," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(4), pages 427-438.
    3. Fischer, Justina AV & Sousa-Poza, Alfonso, 2009. "The Effect of Pension Generosity on Early Retirement: A Microdata Analysis for Europe from 1967 to 2004," MPRA Paper 15940, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Heidler, Matthias & Raffelhüschen, Bernd & Leifels, Arne, 2006. "Heterogenous life expectancy, adverse selection, and retirement behaviour," FZG Discussion Papers 13, University of Freiburg, Research Center for Generational Contracts (FZG).
    5. Karakaya, Güngör, 2008. "Early cessation of activity in the labour market: impact of supply and demand factors," MPRA Paper 13390, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Walter Fisher & Christian Keuschnigg, 2010. "Pension reform and labor market incentives," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 23(2), pages 769-803, March.
    7. Conde-Ruiz, J. Ignacio & Galasso, Vincenzo, 2004. "The macroeconomics of early retirement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 1849-1869, August.
    8. John Ameriks & Joseph Briggs & Andrew Caplin & Minjoon Lee & Matthew D. Shapiro & Christopher Tonetti, 2020. "Older Americans Would Work Longer If Jobs Were Flexible," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 174-209, January.
    9. Estelle James & Alejandra Cox Edwards, 2005. "Do Individual Accounts Postpone Retirement: Evidence from Chile," Working Papers wp098, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
    10. Christian Jaag & Christian Keuschnigg & Mirela Keuschnigg, 2010. "Pension reform, retirement, and life-cycle unemployment," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 17(5), pages 556-585, October.
    11. Monika Riedel & Helmut Hofer, 2013. "Determinants of the Transition from Work into Retirement," NRN working papers 2013-10, The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    12. Vestad, Ola Lotherington, 2013. "Labour supply effects of early retirement provision," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 98-109.
    13. Marjan, MAES, 2008. "Financial and redistributive impact of reforming the old-age pension system in Belgium," Discussion Papers (ECON - Département des Sciences Economiques) 2008040, Université catholique de Louvain, Département des Sciences Economiques.
    14. Heijdra, Ben J. & Romp, Ward E., 2009. "Retirement, pensions, and ageing," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(3-4), pages 586-604, April.
    15. Даниелян, Владимир, 2016. "Детерминанты Пенсионного Возраста: Обзор Исследований [Determinants of Retirement Age: A Review of Research]," MPRA Paper 73865, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Ranzani, Marco, 2006. "Social Security and Labour Supply: the Italian 1992 Reform as a Natural Experiment," MPRA Paper 16569, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Dec 2008.
    17. Bernardo Lanza Queiroz, 2007. "The determinants of male retirement in urban Brazil," Nova Economia, Economics Department, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil), vol. 17(1), pages 11-36, January-A.
    18. Berger, Johannes & Strohner, Ludwig, 2020. "Documentation of the PUblic Policy Model for Austria and other European countries (PUMA)," Research Papers 11, EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research.
    19. Desmet, Raphaël & Jousten, Alain & Perelman, Sergio, 2005. "The Benefits of Separating Early Retirees from the Unemployed: Simulation Results for Belgian Wage Earners," IZA Discussion Papers 1571, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Helmuth Cremer & Jean‐Marie Lozachmeur & Pierre Pestieau, 2008. "Social Security And Retirement Decision: A Positive And Normative Approach," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 213-233, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Early Retirement; Pensions; Pensions System; Employment Protection;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions

    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:usg:dp2006:2006-08. 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: Joerg Baumberger (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vwasgch.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.