Can Social Security Explain Trends in Labor Force Participation of Older Men in the United States?

Blau, David M.; Goodstein, Ryan

doi:10.3368/jhr.45.2.328

Cited by 69 publications

(88 citation statements)

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“…does, according to Goodstein, 2010, andPingle, 2006). But the DRC is cohort-specific, so its effects are absorbed by cohort dummies.…”

Section: Hrs Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies of the impact of the FRA have used data from the Current Population Survey (Blau and Goodstein, 2010;Mastrobuoni, 2009), the Survey of Income and Program Participation (Pingle, 2006), and SSA administrative data (Song and Manchester, 2008;Kopczuk and Song, 2008). These data sources provide large sample sizes, which may be needed to detect the effects of small changes in the FRA (two months per birth cohort).…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…His estimates indicate that each two month increase in the FRA caused a one month increase in retirement age. Blau and Goodstein (2010) and Pingle (2006) also estimate that the increase in the FRA has caused an increase in employment at older ages. The evidence in these three studies does not address the mechanism through which the FRA effect operates, and therefore does not shed light on the question of why the FRA has affected retirement behavior.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Another reform enacted in 1983 gradually increased the Delayed Retirement Credit (DRC), the slope of the benefitclaiming-age profile after the FRA, from 1% for those turning 62 in 1981 to 8% for those turning 62 in 2005. The benefit cut implied by a one year increase in the FRA for an individual who claims the benefit 4 studies have estimated the effect of the increase in the FRA on the timing of labor force exit or benefit claiming (Blau and Goodstein, 2010;Kopczuck and Song, 2008;Mastrobuoni, 2009;Pingle, 2006;Song and Manchester, 2008), but none have focused specifically on the impact on the spike in retirement at 65. In the first part of the paper, we use data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the Longitudinal Employer-Household Data (LEHD) to analyze changes in the retirement and claiming hazards across cohorts.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses to Changes in the Full Retirement Age

Behaghel

Blau²

2012

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

170

121

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We use a US Social Security reform as a quasi-experiment to provide evidence on framing effects in retirement behavior. The reform increased the full retirement age (FRA) from 65 to 66 in two month increments per year of birth for cohorts born from 1938 to 1943. We find strong evidence that the spike in the benefit claiming hazard at 65 moved in lockstep along with the FRA. Results on self-reported retirement and exit from employment are less clear-cut, but go in the same direction. The responsiveness to the new FRA is stronger for people with higher cognitive skills. We interpret the findings as evidence of reference dependence with loss aversion. We develop a simple labor supply model with reference dependence that can explain the results. The model has potentially important implications for framing of future Social Security reforms. JEL: J26

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“…does, according to Goodstein, 2010, andPingle, 2006). But the DRC is cohort-specific, so its effects are absorbed by cohort dummies.…”

Section: Hrs Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses to Changes in the Full Retirement Age

Behaghel

Blau²

2012

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

170

121

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“…While this evidence is suggestive of a behavioral response to the recent business cycle, it is difficult to see in the aggregate data from the CPS. 35 See Mastrobuoni (2009) and Blau and Goodstein (2010). 36 Bosworth and Burtless (2010) also find economically modest effects of the Great Recession on the labor force participation rate of older workers.…”

Section: Retirementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Labor Force Participation: Recent Developments and Future Prospects

Aaronson¹,

Cajner²,

Fallick

et al. 2014

Working Paper (Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland)

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Since 2007, the labor force participation rate has fallen from about 66 percent to about 63 percent. The sources of this decline have been widely debated among academics and policymakers, with some arguing that the participation rate is depressed due to weak labor demand while others argue that the decline was inevitable due to structural forces such as the aging of the population. In this paper, we use a variety of approaches to assess reasons for the decline in participation. Although these approaches yield somewhat different estimates of the extent to which the recent decline in participation refl ects cyclical weakness rather than structural factors, our overall assessment is that much-but not all-of the decline in the labor force participation rate since 2007 is structural in nature. As a result, while we see some of the current low level of the participation rate as indicative of labor market slack, we do not expect the participation rate to show a substantial increase from current levels as labor market conditions continue to improve.JEL Codes: E24, E32, E66, J21, J26.Keywords: Labor force participation, retirement behavior, disability insurance, implications of an aging population, youth employment, labor market slack, labor market fl uctuations and the business cycle.

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A Health Production Model With Endogenous Retirement

et al. 2012

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We formulate a stylized structural model of health, wealth accumulation and retirement decisions building on the human capital framework of health and derive analytic solutions for the time paths of consumption, health, health investment, savings and retirement. We argue that the literature has been unnecessarily restrictive in assuming that health is always at the “optimal” health level. Exploring the properties of corner solutions we find that advances in population health decrease the retirement age, while at the same time individuals retire when their health has deteriorated. This potentially explains why retirees point to deteriorating health as an important reason for early retirement, while retirement ages have continued to fall in the developed world, despite continued improvements in population health and mortality. In our model, workers with higher human capital invest more in health and because they stay healthier retire later than those with lower human capital whose health deteriorates faster.

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Can Social Security Explain Trends in Labor Force Participation of Older Men in the United States?

Cited by 69 publications

References 0 publications

Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses to Changes in the Full Retirement Age

Framing Social Security Reform: Behavioral Responses to Changes in the Full Retirement Age

Labor Force Participation: Recent Developments and Future Prospects

A Health Production Model With Endogenous Retirement

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