On Welfare Effects of Increasing Retirement Age

Krzysztof Makarski and Joanna Tyrowicz

No 11441, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We develop an OLG model with realistic assumptions about longevity to analyze the welfare effects of raising the retirement age. We look at a scenario where an economy has a pay-as-you-go defined benefit scheme and compare it to a scenario with defined contribution schemes (funded or notional). We show that, initially, in both types of pension system schemes the majority of welfare effects comes from adjustments in taxes and/or prices. After the transition period, welfare effects are predominantly generated by the preference for smoothing inherent in many widely used models. We also show that although incentives differ between defined benefit and defined contribution systems, the welfare effects are of comparable magnitude under both schemes. We provide an explanation for this counter-intuitive result.

Keywords: PAYG; retirement age; pension system reform; longevity; welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C68 E21 H55 J11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2018-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dge and nep-mac
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published - published in: Journal of Policy Modelling, 2019, 41 (4), 718 - 746

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Related works:
Journal Article: On welfare effects of increasing retirement age (2019)
Working Paper: On Welfare Effects of Increasing Retirement Age (2018)
Working Paper: On welfare effects of increasing retirement age (2017)
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