Are Older Workers Willing to Learn?

Jens Ruhose (), Stephan Thomsen and Insa Weilage

No 580, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: Adult education can mitigate the productivity decline in aging societies if older workers are willing to learn. We examine a generous partial retirement reform in Germany that led to a massive increase in early retirement. Using county-level administrative data on voluntary education activities, we employ a difference-in-differences approach for identification. The estimates show a strong increase in participation in adult education, specifically in cognitively demanding courses, for early retirees who would have continued working in the absence of the reform. This supports the notion of an intrinsic willingness of older individuals to acquire skills and abilities independent of financial incentives.

Keywords: partial retirement; early retirement; older workers; adult education; generalized difference-in-differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J14 J24 J26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/221744/1/GLO-DP-0580.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Are Older Workers Willing to Learn? (2020)
Working Paper: Are Older Workers Willing to Learn? (2020)
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:zbw:glodps:580

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().