A new GLO Discussion Paper finds that reactions may in large parts depend on how flexibly workers are able to retire.
GLO Discussion Paper No. 1257, 2023
Pension Reforms and Couples’ Labour Supply Decisions – Download PDF
by Moghadam, Hamed Markazi & Puhani, Patrick A. & Tyrowicz, Joanna
GLO Fellow Patrick Puhani
Author Abstract: To determine how wives’ and husbands’ retirement options affect their spouses’ (and their own) labour supply decisions, we exploit (early) retirement cutoffs by way of a regression discontinuity design. Several German pension reforms since the early 1990s have gradually raised women’s retirement age from 60 to 65, but also increased ages for several early retirement pathways affecting both sexes. We use German Socio-Economic Panel data for a sample of couples aged 50 to 69 whose retirement eligibility occurred (i) prior to the reforms, (ii) during the transition years, and (iii) after the major set of reforms. We find that, prior to the reforms, when several retirement options were available to both husbands and wives, both react almost symmetrically to their spouse reaching an early retirement age, that is both husband and wife decrease their labour supply by about 5 percentage points when the spouse reaches age 60). This speaks in favour of leisure complementarities. However, after the set of reforms, when retiring early was much more difficult, we find no more significant labour supply reaction to the spouse reaching a retirement age, whereas reaching one’s own retirement age still triggers a significant reaction in labour supply. Our results may explain some of the diverse findings in the literature on asymmetric reactions between husbands and wives to their spouse reaching a retirement age: such reactions may in large parts depend on how flexibly workers are able to retire.
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JUST PUBLISHED
Vol. 36, Issue 2, April 2023: Journal of Population Economics (JOPE) 16 articles.
https://link.springer.com/journal/148/volumes-and-issues/36-2
Papers will be presented at the online JOPE Spring Conference on April 27, 2023. Registration details.
Vol. 36, Issue 1, January 2023: Journal of Population Economics (JOPE) 16 articles. https://link.springer.com/journal/148/volumes-and-issues/36-1
Watch the videos of article presentations on December 1, 2022 during the GLO Global Conference 2022.
JOPE has CiteScore 6.5 (2021, LINK) & Impact Factor 4.7 (2021, LINK)
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