This article analyzes the impact of marital status and spousal employment on the timing of retirement in Germany and Spain. Retirement behavior is examined by means of event-history models, with a competing risks framework being used to distinguish between voluntary and involuntary work-exit transitions. To take account of the role of social policies, we adopt a comparative approach. Data are drawn from a 2006 special retirement module implemented analogously in national labor force surveys. The results show that spousal labor market participation plays a large role in work-exit transitions, even when retirement is involuntary. This finding questions the widespread belief that coretirement is exclusively due to preference for joint retirement shared among spouses. Moreover, widows and widowers tend to retire prematurely in Germany, whereas no such effect could be found in Spain. This finding is explained by reference to specific economic incentives arising from national pension legislation.

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The statutory minimum wage in Germany was set as an hourly wage. Thus, valid information on gross hourly wages must be calculated from monthly wages and weekly working hours. This paper compares the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and the (Structure of) Earnings Survey (SES/ES). The sampling and collection of data on employees in the household survey GSOEP, and on jobs in the administrative surveys SES/ES exhibit fundamental conceptual differences. Accordingly, there is variation in the definition of types of employment and in the distribution of the observed units regarding central characteristics. Monthly wages, weekly working hours and gross hourly wages differ especially in the lower range of the respective distribution. Against this backdrop specific implications can be derived for minimum wage research.