Social Security, Occupational Pensions, and Retirement in Sweden

This paper provides an overview of the Swedish social security system and its impact on individual retirement behavior. First, we give some historical facts, as well as a more detailed description of the current situation, of labor market behavior of older persons. Second, we describe the social security system. We also describe the different occupational pension schemes, which have an increasing importance. Finally, we show the results from a simulation, where we have used the earnings path of several representative workers to calculate the implicit tax (or subsidy) rate on additional work after age 55 generated by the social security system in interaction with occupational pensions and income taxes as well as housing allowances. We find that the observed labor market behavior of older men is in accordance with the economic incentives generated by the social security system and in particular with the occupational pension scheme for blue collar workers.