A popular view about social security, dating back to its early days of inception, is that it is a means for young, unemployed workers to "purchase" jobs from older, employed workers. The question we ask is: Can social security, by encouraging retirement and hence creating job vacancies for the...

This paper examines the relationship between the family and work histories of olderwomen in the UK and their individual incomes in later life, using retrospective datafrom the first fifteen waves of the British Household Panel Survey. The associationsbetween women’s family histories and their...

The policy agenda of extending working lives requires a holistic understandingof factors underlying the decision of older workers to withdraw from work andto retire. This brief paper presents employment patterns and trends of olderpeople across EU Member States and identifies policy initiatives...

Several studies show that employees with firm-specific skills are more likely to be covered by employer-sponsored pension schemes than workers with general skills. Therefore it can be expected that workers with firm-specific skills retire earlier. This paper tests this prediction using US data...

We use panel data from the US Health and Retirement Study 1992-2002 to estimate theeffect of self-assessed health limitations on active labor market participation of men aroundretirement age. Self-assessments of health and functioning typically introduce anendogeneity bias when studying the...

Despite the increased frequency of job loss for older workers in Europe, little is known on itseffect on the work-retirement decision. Employing individual data from the EuropeanCommunity Household Panel for Germany, Italy, Spain, and the U.K., a multivariatecompeting-risks hazard model is...

The labor market is often asserted to be characterized by rigidities that make it difficult forolder workers to carry out their desired trajectory from work to retirement. An importantsource of rigidity is restrictions on hours of work imposed by firms that use team productionor face high fixed...

This paper studies the presence of hours constraints on the UK labor market and its effect onolder workers labor supply, both at the extensive and the intensive margin. Using panel datafor the period 1991-2004, the results from a competing risks model show that over-employedmale workers can...

Life annuities provide a guaranteed income for the remainder of the recipi-ent’s lifetime, and therefore, annuitization presents an important option whenchoosing an adequate investment strategy for the retirement ages. While thereare numerous research articles studying annuities from a...