Topic Retirement and Pension Provision

Pension entitlements for women significantly lower than for men

Working Longer: The Effects of a Higher Retirement Age on Work-Related Health Investments During the Working Life

Health investments are vital for maintaining physical and mental well-being throughout working life, and their importance is amplified with rising retirement ages due to demographic aging. This is the first study to examine if a longer working life causally increases institutionalized health investments. We explore the impact of a German pension reform that raised the retirement age by three years...

Occupations, Disability Insurance, and Career Choices

Work-limiting disabilities pose a significant risk to the earnings potential and welfare of older workers. While coverage of public disability insurance (DI) systems is almost universal, the risk of becoming dependent on DI varies across occupations. In this paper, I study the value of public DI across different occupations using data from administrative social security records in Germany. I...

Policy Uncertainty, Misinformation and Statutory Retirement Age Reform

Aging societies put a strain on social security systems worldwide. Raising the statutory retirement age (SRA) is one of the most common tools that policymakers employ to respond to this pressure. We study the effect of policy reform on savings, labor supply, and welfare. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we estimate a structural life-cycle model. The model features subjective...

The Gender Pension Gap Grows the More Children a Woman Has

The gender pension gap, the difference in pension entitlements between men and women, is 32 percent for 60-yearolds according to data from the German Pension Insurance (Deutsche Rentenversicherung). In addition, there is a considerable motherhood pension gap: Statutory pension entitlements for mothers and childless women differ greatly. Pension-related childcare credits, which were introduced in 1986 ...

Financial Incentives and Labor Force Participation of Older Workers: Evidence from France

This paper estimates the impact of financial incentives on retirement decision in France for cohorts of men retiring between 1994 to 2012. During these two decades, a number of pension reforms took place, all aiming to achieve financial balance in the context of increasing life expectancy. These reforms strengthened incentives to retire later, either by ofoffering increased pension benefit for later ...

A new occupational disability insurance in the statutory pension insurance scheme

A large group of people is unable to keep up with the increasing retirement age and remain in the workforce until retirement for health reasons. The disability pension that exists today is only suitable to a limited extent to protect this group. The decisive factor for the reduced earning capacity is not the last activity performed, but all activities "under the usual conditions of the general...

Career Decisions over the Life-cycle: The Impact of Social Insurance Policies

Work-limiting disabilities pose a significant risk to the earnings potential and welfare of older workers. While coverage of public disability insurance (DI) systems is almost universal, the risk of becoming dependent on DI varies across occupations. In this paper, I study the value of public DI across different occupations using data from administrative social security records in Germany. I...

The Heterogeneous Effects of Social Assistance and Unemployment Insurance: Evidence from a Life-Cycle Model of Family Labor Supply and Savings

We empirically analyze the heterogeneous welfare effects of unemployment insurance and social assistance. We estimate a structural life-cycle model of singles' and married couples' labor supply and savings decisions. The model includes heterogeneity by age, education, wealth, sex and household composition. In aggregate, social assistance dominates unemployment insurance; however, the opposite holds ...

Income Effects of Disability Benefits

We provide novel evidence about the incentive and welfare effects of an increase in the generosity of disability benefits. Importantly, a unique policy variation in Germany allows us to isolate the income effect of a change in benefit generosity. We leverage this quasi-experimental policy variation using an RD design to estimate the effect of increasing disability benefits on employment, earnings, ...