Closing Routes to Retirement for Women

Geyer, Johannes; Welteke, Clara

doi:10.3368/jhr.56.1.0717-8947r2

Cited by 57 publications

(62 citation statements)

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“…Note that the cohort controls may partially absorb any wealth effects of the reform, the main mechanism offered by Atalay and Barrett (2015) to explain their estimates. 32 Specifically, the cohort controls will absorb any wealth effects on female LFP at ages where women's pension eligibility is not affected, which, as discussed above, are likely to be small based on studies of similar reforms (Staubli and Zweimüller, 2013;Cribb, Emmerson and Tetlow, 2016;Geyer and Welteke, 2019). 33 However, the treatment effect may capture wealth effects at ages where women's pension eligibility is affected.…”

Section: Re-estimating the Impact On Female Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Overall, the estimates suggest that the Australian reform had a smaller impact on female LFP than similar reforms in other countries. For example, studies of similar reforms in the U.K. (Cribb, Emmerson and Tetlow, 2016), Austria (Staubli and Zweimüller, 2013) and Germany (Geyer and Welteke, 2019;Geyer et al, 2020) It is somewhat surprising that the Australian reform did not have a larger impact given that the means test discourages work beyond the APA. This lies in contrast to the reform examined by Cribb, Emmerson and Tetlow (2016) in which there is no income test for the pension and thus a much weaker incentive to retire at the State Pension Age.…”

Section: Re-estimating the Impact On Female Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A key aim of these reforms is to encourage older workers to remain in the labor force, making it vital to understand how these policies affect retirement decisions. While several studies find large effects of these reforms on retirement decisions (e. g., Börsch-Supan and Schnabel, 1998;Snyder and Evans, 2006;Hanel and Riphahn, 2012;Staubli and Zweimüller, 2013;Vestad, 2013;Cribb, Emmerson and Tetlow, 2016;Lalive, Magesan and Staubli, 2017;Geyer and Welteke, 2019), it has been difficult to disentangle the key mechanisms as these reforms may affect retirement behavior through several channels. For example, these reforms may encourage people to delay retirement due to (i) a decrease in individuals' lifetime pension wealth, known as the wealth effect, (ii) the opportunity to work for a longer period and thus accrue a larger pension, known as the accrual effect, (iii) a change in social norms, (iv) the presence of liquidity constraints, or (v) a deferral of any income/earnings test, which discourages work among individuals who are eligible for a pension.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Re-examining Female Labor Supply Responses to the 1994 Australian Pension Reform

Morris

2019

SSRN Journal

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Many governments are aiming to extend working lives by raising the age at which people can claim retirement pensions. This makes it vital to understand how these policies affect retirement decisions. In this paper, I revisit the labor supply effects of a major Australian reform that increased women's pension age from 60 to 65. Atalay and Barrett (2015) studied these effects using repeated household surveys and a differences-indifferences design in which male cohorts form the comparison group. They estimate that the reform increased female labor force participation by 12 percentage points. Using earlier data, I show that the parallel-trends assumption did not hold before the reform because of a strong female-specific trend in participation rates across the relevant cohorts. Accounting for this trend, the estimated effect on female participation falls by two-thirds and becomes statistically insignificant at conventional levels. This highlights the importance of carefully assessing and controlling for trends across cohorts when evaluating pension reforms, which are typically phased in across cohorts.

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Section: Re-estimating the Impact On Female Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Re-estimating the Impact On Female Participationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Re-examining Female Labor Supply Responses to the 1994 Australian Pension Reform

Morris

2019

SSRN Journal

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“…3 We also relate to the large literature that studies the impact of pension eligibility ages on own retirement: E.g. Mastrobuoni (2009), Behaghel and Blau (2012), Staubli and Zweimüller (2013), Cribb et al (2016), Manoli and Weber (2016), Geyer and Welteke (2019), Haller (2019), Nakazawa (2019), and Deshpande et al (2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Joint Retirement of Couples: Evidence from Discontinuities in Denmark

García-Miralles

Leganza

2021

SSRN Journal

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We study how social security influences joint retirement of couples. We exploit three decades of administrative data from Denmark to explore joint retirement in two complementary settings. In the first setting, we exploit the discontinuous increase in retirement observed when individuals become eligible for public pension benefits to identify the causal effects on their spouses. We find that spouses are more likely to retire right when their partners reach pension eligibility age, with a spillover effect across spouses of 7.5%. We further unpack this result by studying additional margins of adjustment such as benefit claiming and earnings, and by documenting meaningful response heterogeneity. We find age differences within couples to be a crucial determinant of joint retirement, which is primarily driven by older spouses who continue to work until their younger partners reach pension eligibility. Controlling for these age differences uncovers a gender gap where female spouses are more likely to adjust their behavior to retire jointly, and this gap remains after controlling for earnings shares within couples. In the second setting, we study to what extent couples adapt their behavior to retire jointly after a reform increases pension eligibility ages. We find spillover effects across spouses comparable to those from the first setting, in which eligibility ages were stable and known by couples well in advance. This suggests that spouses do not face adjustment costs limiting their capacity to retire together after the reform.

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“…A key aim of these reforms is to encourage older workers to remain in the labor force, making it vital to understand how these policies affect retirement decisions. While several studies find large effects of these reforms on retirement decisions (e.g., Börsch-Supan & Schnabel, 1998;Cribb et al, 2016;Geyer & Welteke, 2021;Hanel & Riphahn, 2012;Lalive et al, 2017;Snyder & Evans, 2006;Staubli & Zweimüller, 2013;Vestad, 2013), it has been difficult to disentangle the key mechanisms as these reforms may affect retirement behavior through several channels. For example, these reforms may encourage people to delay retirement due to (i) a decrease in individuals' lifetime pension wealth, known as the wealth effect, (ii) the opportunity to work for a longer period and thus accrue a larger pension, known as the accrual effect, (iii) a change in social norms, (iv) the presence of liquidity constraints, or (v) by delaying any income/earnings tests that only apply when receiving a pension, which make it unattractive for people to continue working after they become eligible for retirement benefits.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-examining female labor supply responses to the 1994 Australian pension reform

Morris

2021

Rev Econ Household

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Many governments are aiming to extend working lives by raising the age at which people can claim retirement pensions. This makes it vital to understand how these policies affect retirement decisions. In this paper, I revisit the labor supply effects of a major Australian reform that increased women’s pension age from 60 to 65. Atalay and Barrett (2015) studied these effects using repeated household surveys and a differences-in-differences design in which male cohorts form the comparison group. They estimate that the reform increased female labor force participation by 12 percentage points. Using earlier data, I show that the parallel-trends assumption did not hold before the reform because of a strong female-specific trend in participation rates across the relevant cohorts. Accounting for this trend, the estimated effect on female participation falls by two-thirds and becomes statistically insignificant at conventional levels. This highlights the importance of carefully assessing and controlling for trends across cohorts when evaluating pension reforms, which are typically phased in across cohorts.

show abstract

Closing Routes to Retirement for Women

Cited by 57 publications

References 0 publications

Re-examining Female Labor Supply Responses to the 1994 Australian Pension Reform

Re-examining Female Labor Supply Responses to the 1994 Australian Pension Reform

Joint Retirement of Couples: Evidence from Discontinuities in Denmark

Re-examining female labor supply responses to the 1994 Australian pension reform

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