Publication:
Health status and retirement decisison for older european couples

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Identifiers
Publication date
1999-10
Defense date
Advisors
Tutors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Impact
Google Scholar
Export
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Abstract
In this paper we use data the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) to describe and analyse the dynamics of joint labour force behaviour of older couples for the EUI2 countries. We focus on three main issues: the relanvance of joint retirement across EUI2 countries, the existence of complementarities in leisure and/or assortative matting and the effects of health variables. Concerning the evidence, we first find that a working spouse is more likely to retire the more recently the other spouse has retired; this effect is stronger if the wife is the working spouse. Second, there is evidence of assortative mating and/or complementarities in leisure; the effects of all relevant factors on the retirement decision of one spouse depend strongly on whether the other one is working, unemployed, or retired. Third, besides the standard evidence that poor health increases the retirement probabiliby, we find that the husband's health affects the couple's retirement decisions much more strongly than the wife's health does. Additional asymmetric effects are detected with respect to income related variables.
Description
Keywords
Joint retirement decisions, Labour force transitions, Health variables, Asymmetric effects
Bibliographic citation