Because individuals aged 55-64 face large and uncertain medical expenditures without the guarantee of public insurance coverage provided by Medicare, the availability of post-retirement health insurance could be an important determinant in the retirement decisions of this group. We investigate the effect of health insurance on retirement by focusing on state and federal "continuation of coverage" mandates which grant the retiree the right to continue purchasing health insurance through a previous employer for a specified number of months after leaving the firm. We exploit variation in the timing and generosity of these laws to identify the effect of the availability of continuation coverage on retirement decisions, using data on 55-64 year-old males from the Current Population Survey and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. We find a sizeable and significant effect of continuation coverage on retirement; one year of mandated continuation benefits raises retirement rates by 20%. The effect appears to be uniform at all ages rather that larger near the age of Medicare eligibility. There is also a large increase in the insurance coverage of individuals who would have retired in the absence of continuation benefits. Our findings have important implications for policies which change the insurance coverage of early retirees, such as national health insurance.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
4469.
Length: Date of creation: Sep 1993 Date of revision: Publication status: published as American Economic Review, September 1995, vol. 84, no. 4, pp. 938-948. Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:4469
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Find related papers by JEL classification: H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
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Krueger, Alan B. & Meyer, Bruce D., 2002.
"Labor supply effects of social insurance,"
Handbook of Public Economics,
in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 33, pages 2327-2392
Elsevier.
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