Love, Toil, and Health Insurance: Why American Husbands Retire When They Do

Joshua Congdon-Hohman

No 1115, Working Papers from College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics

Abstract: The provision of health insurance has previously been shown to be an important determinant of retirement timing among older Americans, but the existing literature has largely ignored some aspects of the inter-spousal dependence of health insurance benefits. Specifically, the literature examines only how retirement may affect the health insurance available to the potential retiree but not how it might affect a spouse's options. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, I find that the impact a husband's retirement might have on a wife's health insurance options has a statistically significant impact on a husband's rate of retirement that is independent of considerations of his own health insurance options. In households where the wife is the only one at risk of losing affordable health insurance if the husband retires, the husband is 30 percent less likely to retire than if neither spouse is at risk (a five percentage point decrease in the retirement rate). Based on these findings, prior research is missing one avenue that changes to the Medicare eligibility age and health insurance policy changes through the Affordable Care Act might impact the labor supply of older workers.

Keywords: Retirement; health insurance; household decision-making (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H55 J26 J32 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2013-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dem, nep-hea, nep-ias and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Contemporary Economic Policy, Volume 33:1, January 2015, pp. 118-140.

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Journal Article: LOVE, TOIL, AND HEALTH INSURANCE: WHY AMERICAN HUSBANDS RETIRE WHEN THEY DO (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hcx:wpaper:1115

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