Sick of retirement?

Nick Nielsen

Journal of Health Economics, 2019, vol. 65, issue C, 133-152

Abstract: This paper examines the causal effect of retirement on health and healthcare utilization using two identification strategies on Danish full population data. First, I use a reform of the statutory retirement age in an IV design. Second, I use a large discontinuity in retirement take-up at the earliest age of retirement (60) in a regression discontinuity design. The results show that early retirement leads to decreases in GP visits and hospitalizations of 8–10% in the short run. The reduction in GP visits is driven by a drop in female GP utilization, while both genders contribute equally to the decline in hospitalizations. Early retirement has no effect on health measured by comorbidities or mortality. Statutory retirement has no effect on health or healthcare utilization. The results suggest that gender, age at retirement and complier composition are important sources of heterogeneity.

Keywords: Retirement; Health; Healthcare utilization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I12 I18 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629618300080
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:65:y:2019:i:c:p:133-152

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2019.03.008

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire

More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().