All across Europe, old age labor force participation has declined dramatically during the last decades. This secular trend coincides with population aging. The European social security systems therefore face a double threat: retirees receive pensions for a longer time while there are less workers per retiree to shoulder the financial burden of the pension systems. This paper shows that a significant part of this problem is homemade: most European pension systems provide strong incentives to retire early. The correlation between the force of these incentives with old age labor force participation is strongly negative. The paper provides qualitative and econometric evidence for the strength of the incentive effects on old age labor supply across Europe and for the German public pension program.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
6780.
Length: Date of creation: Nov 1998 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6780
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Find related papers by JEL classification: J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
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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.:
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