The effects of an increase in the retirement age on health — Evidence from administrative data

Mara Barschkett, Johannes Geyer, Peter Haan and Anna Hammerschmid

The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, 2022, vol. 23, issue C

Abstract: This study analyzes the causal effect of an increase in the retirement age on official health diagnoses. We exploit a sizable cohort-specific pension reform for women using a Difference-in-Differences approach. The analysis is based on official records covering all individuals insured by the public health system in Germany and including all certified diagnoses by practitioners. This enables us to gain a detailed understanding of the multi-dimensionality in these health effects. The empirical findings reflect the multi-dimensionality but allow for deriving two broader conclusions. We provide evidence that the increase in the retirement age negatively affects health outcomes as the prevalence of several diagnoses, e.g., mental health, musculoskeletal diseases, and obesity, increases. In contrast, we do not find support for an improvement in health related to a prolonged working life. These findings are robust to sensitivity checks, and do not change when correcting for multiple hypothesis testing.

Keywords: Retirement; Pension reform; Health; ICD-10; Regression Discontinuity Design; Difference-in-Differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I12 I18 J14 J18 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212828X22000354

Related works:
Working Paper: The Effects of an Increase in the Retirement Age on Health: Evidence from Administrative Data (2021)
Working Paper: The Effects of an Increase in the Retirement Age on Health – Evidence from Administrative Data (2021)
Working Paper: The Effects of an Increase in the Retirement Age on Health - Evidence from Administrative Data (2021)
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:eee:joecag:v:23:y:2022:i:c:s2212828x22000354

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeoa.2022.100403

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of the Economics of Ageing is currently edited by D.E. Bloom, A. Sousa-Poza and U. Sunde

More articles in The Journal of the Economics of Ageing from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().