Does Retirement Kill You? Evidence from Early Retirement Windows

The effect that health has on the retirement decision has long been studied. We examine the reverse relationship, whether retirement has a direct impact on later-life health. To identify the causal relationship, we use early retirement window offers to instrument for retirement. We find no negative effects of early retirement on men’s health, and if anything, a temporary increase in self-reported health and improvements in health of highly educated workers. While this is consistent with previous literature using Social Security ages as instruments, we also find that anticipation of retirement might be important, and bias the previous estimates downwards.retirement;depression;self-reported health;heart attack;cancer;diabetes;instrumental variables

Pension plans and the retirement replacement rates in the Netherlands

This study compares the expected retirement replacement rates of several cohorts of Dutch employees at the time of their planned retirement with the 'actual' replacement rates based on available pension records. We find that using reasonable indexation rates, the expected replacement rates�are higher than the one we compute. Larger discrepancies are found for younger cohorts. We decompose the difference between the expected and 'actual' replacement rates and find that the mismatch is related to poor institutional knowledge for the whole sample. We also show the role of assumptions on institutions and on wage profiles in determining our results.