Given human longevity, fertility, health and social developments, workers become inactive relatively early throughout Europe. This partially stems from older workers being pushed out of the labour market and from personal motivation to prefer benefits to wages. We focus on this latter effect and...

We examine whether easy and early access to old-age benefits induce older workers to become inactive. We use Polish LFS data. We find added worker effect prevailing over discouraged worker effect. The latter arises after a few quarters and is asymmetric. Females permanently leave the workforce....

This paper looks at the evolution of the labour markets in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania since the beginning of transition (in some respects since 1996/1998) until 2003, with a particular focus on labour force participation. How did labour supply in the Baltic countries respond to changes in...

Using Dutch administrative data, we assess the work and earnings capacity of disability insurance (DI) recipients by estimating employment and earnings responses to benefit cuts. Reassessment of DI entitlement under more stringent criteria removed 14.4 percent of recipients from the program and...

Unexpected negative health shocks may have serious consequences for labour force participation, not only for those who incur the shock but also for their family members. In particular, adult children may spend substantial time providing informal care and may incur stress-induced mental health...

The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program in the United States creates incentives for potential aged recipients to reduce labor supply prior to becoming eligible, and our past research finds that older men likely to be eligible for SSI at age 65 reduce their labor supply in the years...

Phased retirement has been discussed as a means for increasing labour supply for people of older active age. The idea is that instead of leaving a full-time job early for full-time retirement, an employee should reduce the working time either in the same job or by changing jobs, and stay on in...

In Germany, informal home care is preferred to professional care services in the public discussion as well as in legal care regulations. However, they ascribe only minor importance to the opportunity costs care givers have to face. Therefore, this paper explores the influence home care has on...

This paper looks at one of the major contributor to low overall employment rate in Hungary, the very low activity of the elderly. Although there are scattered pieces of evidence about the social security system in general having substantial influence on incentives and activity, the actual...

Older women's patterns of labor supply over the past forty years have differed markedly from those of younger women. Their labor force participation declined sharply during a period of rapid increase for younger women, and then increased significantly while younger women's plateaued and even...