Health and Retirement among Older Workers

Eugenio Zucchelli (), Anthony Howard Harris, Nigel Rice and Andrew Michael Jones ()

Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers from HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York

Abstract: This paper investigates the causal relationship between ill-health and retirement among older working individuals. We represent the transition to retirement as a discrete-time hazard model using a stock-sample from the first five waves (2001- 2005) of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. Our results show that health plays an important role in individual retirement decisions and that negative shocks to health greatly increase the hazard of retirement, especially for men. This is true for both a measure of health limitations and a measure of latent health obtained using pooled ordered probit models, as well as for three alternative health shock measures. We also consider the effects of partners’ health and labour market status on an individual’s retirement decision. Our estimates suggest that partners’ characteristics do not significantly influence individual retirement choices.

Keywords: health; health shocks; discrete-time hazard model; retirement. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-hea and nep-lab
Date: 2007-08
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:yor:hectdg:07/19

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