Hours of Work and Retirement Behavior

C. Sofia Machado () and Miguel Portela ()
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C. Sofia Machado: Instituto Politécnico do Cávado e do Ave

No 6270, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using a novel dataset from the 2006 Portuguese Labor Force Survey this paper examines the impact of a voluntary reduction in hours of work, before retirement, on the moment of exit from the labor force. If, as often suggested, flexibility in hours of work is a useful measure to postpone retirement, then a reduction in working hours should be associated with retirement at later ages. Results prove otherwise suggesting that reducing hours of work before retirement is associated with early exits from the labor force. A reduction in hours of work seems to signal the worker's wish to retire sooner rather than to announce the desire of remaining in the labor market. This result may enclose the need for some alternative policy strategies regarding working hours.

Keywords: working hours; retirement; aging; older workers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J14 J21 J22 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2012-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-dem, nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (26)

Published - published in: IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, 2014, 3 (16), 1-22

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Related works:
Journal Article: Hours of work and retirement behaviour (2014)
Working Paper: Hours of work and retirement behavior (2011)
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