What Triggers Early Retirement ? Results from Swiss Pension Funds

Monika Bütler (), Olivia Huguenin and Federica Teppa

Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'Econométrie et d'Economie politique (DEEP) from Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, DEEP

Abstract: Early retirement is predominantly considered as the result of incentives set by social security and the tax system. But people seem to retire early even in the absence of such distortions as the Swiss example demonstrates. We look for determinants of early retirement, in particular the role of lifetime income and family status, using individual data from a selection of Swiss pension funds. Our findings suggest that affordability is a key determinant in retirement decisions: More affuent men, and - to a much smaller extent - women, tend to leave the work force earlier. The fact that early retirement has become much more prevalent in the last 15 years is another indicator for the importance of affordability as Switzerland's funded pension system has matured over that period leading to higher effective replacement rates.

Keywords: occupational pension; retirement decision; duration models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 H55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-04
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Related works:
Working Paper: What Triggers Early Retirement. Results from Swiss Pension Funds (2004)
Working Paper: What Triggers Early Retirement? Results from Swiss Pension Funds (2005)
Working Paper: What Triggers Early Retirement? Results from Swiss Pension Funds (2004)
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