The Retirement Incentive Effects of Canada's Income Security Programs

Michael Baker, Jonathan Gruber and Kevin Milligan

No 8658, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Like most other developed nations, Canada has a large income security system for retirement that provides significant and widely varying disincentives to work at older ages. Empirical investigation of their effects has been hindered by lack of appropriate data. We provide an empirical analysis of the retirement incentives of the Canadian Income Security (IS) system using a new and comprehensive administrative data base. We find that the work disincentives inherent in the Canadian IS system have large and statistically significant impacts on retirement. This suggests that program reform can some play a role in responses to the fiscal crises these programs periodically experience. We also demonstrate the importance of controlling for lifetime earnings in retirement models. Specifications without these controls overestimate the effects of the IS system. Finally, our estimates vary in sensible ways across samples lending greater confidence to our estimates.

JEL-codes: H3 J2 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-pbe and nep-pub
Note: AG LS PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published as Baker, Michael, Jonathan Gruber and Kevin Milligan. "The Retirement Incentive Effects Of Canada's Income Security Programs," Canadian Journal of Economics, 2003, v36(2,May), 261-290.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8658.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The retirement incentive effects of Canada's Income Security programs (2003)
Journal Article: The retirement incentive effects of Canada's Income Security programs (2003)
Working Paper: The Retirement Incentive Effects of Canada's Income Security Programs (2001)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8658

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w8658

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().