The paper provides a perspective on the development of the Belgian disability insurance system. Using both survey and administrative data, it sketches a picture of the (changing) factors leading towards disability, as well as the outcomes in terms of program participation. The paper shows the...

In this paper we use the actual rules and formulas of an occupational pension fund, the state pension fund and the tax system in the Netherlands to calculate net replacement rates at each age from 60 to 70 in full and partial retirement scenarios. We then vary the parameters of the pension...

We study retirement incentives with augmented option value model à la Stock and Wise (1990). We propose methodological extensions to better reflect the respective incentives faced by singles and couples. Our results show that a more comprehensive modelling of couples' incentives leads to very...

In 1995, the UK government legislated to increase the earliest age at which women could claim a state pension from 60 to 65 between April 2010 and March 2020. This paper uses data from the first two years of this change coming into effect to estimate the impact of increasing the state pension...

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...

A majority of older Finns withdraw from employment via early retirement schemes years before the statutory retirement age. Over the past 15 years, a series of policy reforms have been introduced to reduce the widespread use of early exit pathways. By exploiting variation in eligibility rules...

Using data from a stated preferences experiment in the Netherlands, we find that replacing fulltime pension schemes with schemes that offer gradual retirement opportunities induce workers to retire one year later on average. Total life-time labour supply, however, decreases with 3.4 months...

This paper uses panel data from the pan-European SHARE survey to study labor market behavior of older male self-employed visa-vis wage employed workers. We find the self-employed to work longer hours, to be more flexible in their hours allocation, and to retire later in all countries. We relate...

In many European countries, the labor market participation of older workers is considerably lower than the labor market participation of prime-age workers. This study analyzes the variation in labor market withdrawal of older workers across 13 European countries over the period 1995-2008. We...

Flexible retirement - that is the opportunity to choose one’s own personal retirement age - serves as a hedge against pension risk and provides insurance to workers facing health or productivity shocks. Flexible retirement and flexible pension schemes are in practice closely linked because of...