Culture, financial constraints, and retirement decision

Lionel Cottier

Labour Economics, 2018, vol. 53, issue C, 128-145

Abstract: This paper investigates the interaction between cultural effects and financial constraints. I study how culture affects male labor supply near retirement before and after reforms that introduced early access to pension benefits. Variation in the cultural dimension arises from different cultural groups across state borders in Switzerland. Results show that the impact of culture over time follows changes in financial constraints resulting from the reforms. While individuals from the two cultural groups had identical labor force participation rates near retirement in 1970, they differ by almost three percent in 2000. I argue that the introduction of early access to pension benefits in the 1980s and 1990s loosened financial constraints and gave more room for culture to affect labor force participation.

Keywords: Culture; Labor supply; Financial constraints; Work attitudes; Retirement; Social norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J14 J22 J26 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092753711830037X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:labeco:v:53:y:2018:i:c:p:128-145

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2018.04.008

Access Statistics for this article

Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino

More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().