Burnout and the Retirement Decision

Nicole Maestas and Xiaoyan Li
Additional contact information
Nicole Maestas: RAND
Xiaoyan Li: RAND

Working Papers from University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center

Abstract: We introduce the process of psychological burnout and recovery as an explanation for the phenomenon known as unretirement. We illustrate theoretically how predictable time variation in burnout could generate retirement and subsequent re-entry in a standard retirement model. We apply this model to the longitudinal Health and Retirement Study, presenting a novel measure of burnout, the Burnout EX3 Index. The index is correlated with different types of work stressors, and its time profile discriminates among different types of retirees. For example, prior to retirement, burnout rises steeply for future unretirees then falls rapidly after retirement; whereas burnout among future partial retirees is low and changes little over time. Using a series of econometric models derived from our theoretical model, we show that as burnout rises, retirement becomes more probable, and as burnout recedes following retirement, re-entry becomes more probable. While access to public and private pension benefits increases the likelihood of retirement for all retirees, pension accruals are least important for those who will later unretire, suggesting that unretirees are more willing to trade future gains in pension wealth for leisure than other retirees. Indeed, for this group, the effect of burnout dominates that of the net return to work.

Pages: 53 pages
Date: 2007-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://mrdrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/Papers/pdf/wp166.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (http://mrdrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/Papers/pdf/wp166.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://mrdrc.isr.umich.edu/publications/Papers/pdf/wp166.pdf)

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:mrr:papers:wp166

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center P.O. Box 1248, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MRRC Administrator ().