Training Access, Reciprocity, and Expected Retirement Age

Raymond Montizaan, Andries de Grip and Didier Fouarge

No 8862, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper investigates whether employers can induce employees to postpone retirement by offering access to training courses that maintain job proficiency. We use unique, matched employer–employee surveys for the Dutch public sector, which include detailed information on a wide range of HR practices applied in the organization, as well as the expected retirement age of its employees. We find that training policies, as reported by employers, are significantly positively related to employee expected retirement age, irrespective of whether employees actually participate in training. We show that this positive relationship is driven by employees' positive reciprocal inclinations, indicating that provision of training may serve as a tool to motivate older employees in their job and consequently to retire later. The provision of training access may therefore complement existing pension reforms in many industrialized countries that aim to increase labor-force participation of older workers. Robustness analyses indicate that the relationship between offering training access and expected age of retirement is unlikely to be driven by reverse causality, self-selection, or the presence of other organizational characteristics.

Keywords: reciprocity and retirement; training access (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2015-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published - published as 'Train to retain: Training opportunities, positive reciprocity, and expected retirement age' in: Journal of Vocational Behavior, 2020, 117, 103332 (with Bert Schreurs)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Training access, reciprocity, and expected retirement age (2015)
Working Paper: Training access, reciprocity, and expected retirement age (2015)
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