A Higher Retirement Age Has Negative Health Effects

Mara Barschkett, Johannes Geyer and Peter Haan

DIW Weekly Report, 2022, vol. 12, issue 41, 259-265

Abstract: In the policy debate, there are regular demands to further increase the retirement age to address the financial challenges for the pension system. However, a prolonged working life impacts a person’s health. Detailed data from the statutory health insurance companies shows that abolishing the “Rente für Frauen” (women’s pension) in 1999, which allowed women to retire at 60, resulted in negative health effects. Women who were affected by the reform and could not retire until age 63 are more likely to have mental illnesses, to be obese, or to suffer from musculoskeletal diseases (arthrosis and other dorsopathies). The results show that increasing the retirement age further should be accompanied by preventive health and education investments. At the same time, further reforms of the disability pension are needed to better safeguard against health risks.

Keywords: Retirement age; Pension reform; Health; Health expenditures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.856336.de/dwr-22-41-1.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:diw:diwdwr:dwr12-41-1

Access Statistics for this article

DIW Weekly Report is currently edited by Tomaso Duso, Marcel Fratzscher, Peter Haan, Claudia Kemfert, Alexander Kritikos, Alexander Kriwoluzky, Stefan Liebig, Lukas Menkhoff, Karsten Neuhoff, Carsten Schröder, Katharina Wrohlich and Sabine Fiedler

More articles in DIW Weekly Report from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().