Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/308179 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Citation: 
[Journal:] The European Journal of Health Economics [ISSN:] 1618-7601 [Volume:] 24 [Issue:] 7 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Berlin, Heidelberg [Year:] 2022 [Pages:] 1101-1120
Publisher: 
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
In this paper, we use unique health record data that cover outpatient care and the associated costs to quantify the health care costs of a sizable increase in the retirement age in Germany. For the identification, we exploit a sizable cohort-specific pension reform which abolished an early retirement program for all women born after 1951. Our results show that health care costs significantly increase by about 2.9% in the age group directly affected by the increase in the retirement age (women aged 60–62). We further show that the cost increase is mainly driven by the following specialist groups: Ophthalmologists, general practitioners (GPs), neurology, orthopedics, and radiology. While the effects are significant and meaningful on the individual level, we show that the increase in health care costs is modest relative to the positive fiscal effects of the pension reform. Specifically, we estimate an aggregate increase in the health costs of about 7.7 million euro for women born in 1952 aged 60–62 which amounts to less than 2% of the overall positive fiscal effects of the pension reform.
Subjects: 
Pension reform
Health care costs
Difference-in-differences
JEL: 
I10
I12
I18
J14
J18
J26
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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