The Effect of Retirement Incentives on Retirement Behavior Evidence from the Self-Employed In the United States and England

Julie Zissimopoulos, Nicole Maestas and Lynn Karoly

No WR-528, Working Papers from RAND Corporation

Abstract: The authors examine how public and private pension and health insurance systems affect retirement transitions. In many countries, public and private pension eligibility, as well as access to health insurance varies between self-employed and wage and salary workers, and these differences are likely to cause differential retirement patterns both within and across countries. They use the variation in these institutional features within and across the United States and England to analyze retirement patterns. Based on longitudinal data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) in the United States and the English Longitudinal Survey of Ageing (ELSA) they find that the higher labor force exit rate of wage and salary workers compared to self-employed workers is due to defined benefit pension incentives created by the public and private pension systems. Higher rates of labor force exit at ages 55 and older in England compared to the United States are due in part to the availability of publicly provided health insurance.

Keywords: retirement; self-employment; health insurance; pensions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2007-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/working_papers/2007/RAND_WR528.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
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:ran:wpaper:wr-528

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from RAND Corporation Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Benson Wong ().