Pension Incentives and the Retirement Decisions of Couples

Kadir Atalay and Garry Barrett

No 10013, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Recent reforms to social security in many countries have sought to delay retirement. Given the family context in which retirement decisions are made, social security reforms have potentially important spill-over effects on the participation of spouses. This paper analyses the impact of women's pension incentives on the retirement decision of their husband. The 1993 Age Pension reform in Australia increased the eligibility age for Age Pension benefits for women. This reform caused an increase in participation of men married to women in the affected cohorts. The behavioral responses are due to wealth effects and preferences for shared leisure.

Keywords: joint retirement; age pension; retirement; spousal effect (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D91 I38 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2016-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dem, nep-lma and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published - published in: Journal of Population Economics, 2019, 32 (3), 735 - 767

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