ZusammenfassungViele Länder Europas reformieren ihre Rentensysteme. Eines der Hauptziele ist die Erhöhung des Rentenalters, um die finanzielle Stabilität der Rentensysteme angesichts steigender Lebenserwartung zu sichern. So wollen z. B. Deutschland, Dänemark, Frankreich, Italien und die Niederlande das Rentenalter schrittweise von 65 auf 67 Jahre anheben. Was sind die zu erwartenden Folgen einer Pensionierung für die Gesundheit? Wenn die Pensionierung tatsächlich Auswirkungen auf den Gesundheitszustand hat, sind weitere Folgen für die Kosten im Gesundheitswesen zu erwarten.Norma B. Coe und Gema Zamarro (2011), Retirement effects on health in Europe, Journal of Health Economics 30, 77–86.

Home ownership is not only an important asset, but also provides an income stream in kind.If individuals use pension savings to purchase real estate, they face a trade-off between alleviating borrowing constraints when young and lower liquid retirement means when old.We study the decision to withdraw retirement assets for home purchase in advance by analyzing a recent reform. A change in down payment requirements made such early withdrawals less attractive, as borrowers are obliged to provide a larger amount of nonpension equity for a home purchase. Using individual-level data from a large Swiss occupational pension provider, we find that the share of individuals who withdrew in a given year dropped by one sixth. For the withdrawers, the average share of pension assets withdrawn decreased by 5.5 percentage points, mainly driven by individuals with lower levels of pension wealth and of older age. Nonetheless, our analysis also shows that while limiting second pillar withdrawals can aggravate the borrowing constraint to some degree, they are not the only constraining factor when purchasing a home.