Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

The Market Crash and Mass Layoffs: How the Current Economic Crisis May Affect Retirement

Contents:

Author Info

  • Coile Courtney C

    () (Wellesley College)

  • Levine Phillip B

    () (Wellesley College)

Abstract

Recent dramatic declines in U.S. stock and housing markets have led to widespread speculation that shrinking retirement accounts and falling home equity will lead workers to delay retirement. Yet the weakness in the labor market and its impact on retirement are often overlooked. If older job seekers have difficulty finding work, they may retire earlier than expected. The net effect of the current economic crisis on retirement is thus far from clear. In this paper, we use 30 years of data from the March Current Population Survey to estimate models relating retirement decisions to fluctuations in equity, housing, and labor markets. We find that workers age 62 to 69 are responsive to the unemployment rate and to long-run fluctuations in stock market returns. Less-educated workers are more sensitive to labor market conditions and more-educated workers are more sensitive to stock market conditions. We find no evidence that workers age 55 to 61 respond to these fluctuations or that workers at any age respond to fluctuating housing markets. On net, we predict that the increase in retirement attributable to the rising unemployment rate will be almost 50 percent larger than the decrease in retirement brought about by the stock market crash.

Download Info

If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
File URL: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bejeap.2011.11.issue-1/bejeap.2011.11.1.2568/bejeap.2011.11.1.2568.xml?format=INT
Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.

Bibliographic Info

Article provided by De Gruyter in its journal The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy.

Volume (Year): 11 (2011)
Issue (Month): 1 (April)
Pages: 1-42

as in new window
Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:11:y:2011:i:1:n:22

Contact details of provider:
Web page: http://www.degruyter.com

Order Information:
Web: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bejeap

Related research

Keywords:

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Courtney C. Coile & Phillip B. Levine, 2004. "Bulls, Bears, and Retirement Behavior," NBER Working Papers 10779, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  2. Michael D. Hurd & Monika Reti & Susann Rohwedder, 2009. "The Effect of Large Capital Gains or Losses on Retirement," NBER Chapters, in: Developments in the Economics of Aging, pages 127-163 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  3. Purvi Sevak, 2002. "Wealth Shocks and Retirement Timing: Evidence from the Nineties," Working Papers wp027, University of Michigan, Michigan Retirement Research Center.
  4. Sewin Chan & Ann Huff Stevens, 1999. "Employment and Retirement Following a Late Career Job Loss," Departmental Working Papers 199903, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
  5. Chan Sewin & Stevens Ann H, 2004. "How Does Job Loss Affect the Timing of Retirement?," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-26, May.
  6. Courtney C. Coile & Phillip B. Levine, 2007. "Labor market shocks and retirement: Do government programs matter?," NBER Chapters, in: Trans-Atlantic Public Economics Seminar (TAPES), Public Policy and Retirement, pages 1902-1919 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  7. Alicia H. Munnell & Steven Sass & Mauricio Soto & Natalia Zhivan, 2006. "Has the Displacement of Older Workers Increased?," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2006-17, Center for Retirement Research, revised Sep 2006.
  8. Currie, Janet & Madrian, Brigitte C., 1999. "Health, health insurance and the labor market," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 50, pages 3309-3416 Elsevier.
  9. Brigitte C. Madrian & Lars John Lefgren, 1999. "A Note on Longitudinally Matching Current Population Survey (CPS) Respondents," NBER Technical Working Papers 0247, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  10. Hilary Hoynes, 1999. "The Employment, Earnings, and Income of Less Skilled Workers Over the Business Cycle," NBER Working Papers 7188, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  11. Daniel Hallberg, 2011. "Economic Fluctuations and Retirement of Older Employees," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 25(3), pages 287-307, 09.
  12. Steven F. Venti & David A. Wise, 2000. "Aging and Housing Equity," NBER Working Papers 7882, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  13. Alan L. Gustman & Thomas Steinmeier, 2008. "How Changes in Social Security Affect Recent Retirement Trends," NBER Working Papers 14105, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  14. Leora Friedberg & Anthony Webb, 2005. "Retirement and the Evolution of Pension Structure," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(2).
  15. Chan, Sewin & Stevens, Ann Huff, 2001. "Job Loss and Employment Patterns of Older Workers," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(2), pages 484-521, April.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
  1. Gopi Shah Goda & John B. Shoven & Sita Nataraj Slavov, 2012. "Does Stock Market Performance Influence Retirement Intentions?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 47(4), pages 1055-1081.
  2. Romain Duval & Mehmet Eris & Davide Furceri, 2011. "The Effects of Downturns on Labour Force Participation: Evidence and Causes," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 875, OECD Publishing.
  3. David Warner & Mark Hayward & Melissa Hardy, 2010. "The Retirement Life Course in America at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer, vol. 29(6), pages 893-919, December.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:bejeap:v:11:y:2011:i:1:n:22

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Peter Golla).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.