Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/247691 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
ZEW Discussion Papers No. 21-082
Publisher: 
ZEW - Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung, Mannheim
Abstract: 
Early retirement options are usually targeted at employees at risk of not reaching their regular retirement age in employment. An important at-risk group comprises employees who have worked in demanding jobs for many years. This group may be particularly negatively affected by the abolition of early retirement options. To measure differences in labor market reactions of employees in low- and high-demand jobs, we exploit the quasi-natural experiment of a cohort-specific pension reform that increased the early retirement age for women from 60 to 63 years. Based on a large administrative dataset, we use a regression-discontinuity approach to estimate the labor market reactions. Surprisingly, we find the same relative employment increase of about 25% for treated women who were exposed to low and to high job demand. For older women in demanding jobs, we also do not find substitution effects into unemployment, partial retirement, disability pension, or inactivity. Eligibility for the pension for women required highlabor market attachment; thus, we argue that this eligibility rule induced a positive selection of healthy workers into early retirement.
Subjects: 
pension reform
job demand
early retirement
quasi-experimental variation
JEL: 
J14
J18
J22
J26
H31
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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