In general, retirement is seen as a pure labor supply phenomenon, but firms can have strong incentives to send expensive older workers into retirement. Based on the seniority wage model developed by Lazear (1979), we discuss steep seniority wage profiles as incentives for firms to dismiss older...

Although elderly men and women share many of the same problems as they age, their lives are likely to follow different courses. Women are more likely than men to live into old old-age and are more likely to spend part of their young old-age caring for husbands or parents. By providing this...

The aging of the American population will be a critical public policy issue in the years ahead. This paper surveys the recent literature on the economics of aging, with a special emphasis on government spending on the aged. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that the proportion of the elderly in...

In this paper, we examine whether adult education delays retirement and increases labour force participation among the elderly, a mechanism suggested in the OECD strategy for 'active ageing' and the 'Lisbon strategy' of the EU. Using register data from Sweden, we analyse transcripts from adult...

Projections show public pensions to take an increasing share of GDP. This has lead to increased activity in the reform area and resulted in a plethora of reforms ranging from marginal to more radical ones. The former kind has often tried to hold back increasing expenditure by decreasing benefit...

The purpose of this paper is to compare pension schemes with respect to their intergenerational redistributive effects caused by economic and demographic changes. It is shown how these effects depend on the specific design of the pension scheme, with special attention devoted to the indexation...

The aging of the global population is in the headlines following a report that China's population fell as deaths surpassed births. Pundits worry that a declining Chinese workforce means trouble for other economies that have come to rely on China's exports. France is pushing through an increase...

We study how economic incentives affect labor force exit through different income security programs, old-age pensions as well as income taxes in Sweden. We use the option value for staying in the labor force as a measure of economic incentives and estimate an econometric model for the choice of...

This paper collects and reviews information about routes to retirement and exits from the labor force by older workers in Sweden. It gives a concise survey of rules of the major retirement schemes covering disability, sickness and unemployment. Usinglongitudinal micro data from the period...