Labor Market Shocks and Retirement: Do Government Programs Matter?

Courtney Coile and Phillip Levine

No 12559, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper examines how unemployment affects retirement and whether the Unemployment Insurance (UI) system and Social Security (SS) system affect how older workers respond to labor market shocks. To do so, we use pooled cross-sectional data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS) as well as March CPS files matched between one year and the next and longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS). We find that downturns in the labor market increase retirement transitions. The magnitude of this effect is comparable to that associated with moderate changes in financial incentives to retire and to the threat of a health shock to which older workers are exposed. Interestingly, retirements only increase in response to an economic downturn once workers become SS-eligible, suggesting that retirement benefits may help alleviate the income loss associated with a weak labor market. We also estimate the impact of UI generosity on retirement and find little consistent evidence of an effect. This suggests that in some ways SS may serve as a more effective form of unemployment insurance for older workers than UI.

JEL-codes: H55 J26 J64 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ias, nep-lab and nep-pbe
Note: AG LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published as Coile, Courtney C. and Phillip B. Levine. “Labor Market Shocks and Retirement: Do Government Programs Matter?” Journal of Public Economics 91(10):1902-1919, November 2007.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12559.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Labor Market Shocks and Retirement: Do Government Programs Matter? (2007)
Journal Article: Labor market shocks and retirement: Do government programs matter? (2007)
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:nbr:nberwo:12559

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12559

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().