Changing identity: Retiring from unemployment

Clemens Hetschko, Andreas Knabe and Ronnie Schöb
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Ronnie Schoeb

No 2011/11, Discussion Papers from Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics

Abstract: Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1984-2009, we follow persons from their working life into their retirement years and find that, on average, employed people maintain their life satisfaction upon retirement, while long-term unemployed people report a substantial increase in their life satisfaction when they retire. These results are robust to controlling for changes in other life circumstances and suggest that retiring is associated with a switch in the relevant social norms that causes an increase in identity utility for the formerly unemployed. This is supportive of the idea that, by including identity in the utility function, results from the empirical life satisfaction literature can be reconciled with the economic theory of individual utility.

Keywords: life satisfaction; retirement; unemployment; identity; social norm (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I31 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-lab, nep-lma and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Changing Identity: Retiring From Unemployment (2014)
Working Paper: Changing Identity: Retiring from Unemployment (2011)
Working Paper: Changing Identity: Retiring from Unemployment (2011)
Working Paper: Changing Identity: Retiring from Unemployment (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:fubsbe:201111

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