Mortality Change, the Uncertainty Effect, and Retirement

Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan () and David Weil ()

No 8742, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We examine the role of changing mortality in explaining the rise of retirement over the course of the 20th century. We construct a model in which individuals make labor/leisure choices over their lifetimes subject to uncertainty about their date of death. In an environment in which mortality is high, an individual who saved up for retirement would face a high risk of dying before he could enjoy his planned leisure. In this case, the optimal plan is for people to work until they die. As mortality falls, however, it becomes optimal to plan, and save for, retirement. We simulate our model using actual changes in the US life table over the last century, and show that this 'uncertainty effect' of declining mortality would have more than outweighed the 'horizon effect' by which rising life expectancy would have led to later retirement. One of our key results is that continuous changes in mortality can lead to discontinuous changes in retirement behavior.

JEL-codes: E21 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ias
Date: 2002-01
Note: AG EFG PE
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Related works:
Working Paper: Mortality Change, the Uncertainty Effect, and Retirement (2004)
Working Paper: Mortality Change, the Uncertainty Effect, and Retirement (2002)
Working Paper: Mortality Change, the Uncertainty Effect, and Retirement (2006)
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