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The Effects of Early Retirement Incentives on Retirement Decisions

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  • Dolls, Mathias
  • Krolage, Carla

Abstract

This paper analyzes behavioral responses to a reform in the German public pension system that allowed individuals with a long contribution history to retire without deductions before reaching the regular retirement age. Following the 2014 reform, individuals with 45 contribution years could retire without deductions as early as age 63 instead of age 65. Using high-quality administrative data from public pension insurance accounts, we first conduct an event study to quantify responses to becoming eligible for the early retirement scheme. Our results indicate that the probability of retiring immediately increases by more than 10 percentage points upon becoming eligible, relative to the counterfactual probability of retiring at the same age with deductions. Second, we employ a coarsened exact matching procedure to compare retirement entry decisions of eligible and non-eligible individuals. Results are in line with the event study and show that individuals who are eligible for the early retirement scheme retire on average 5.4 months earlier than non-eligible individuals with identical characteristics. With additional pension insurance expenditures of 3.4 billion euro and aggregate fiscal costs of 6.5 billion euro in 2016, our subsequent fiscal cost projections are at the upper end of the range of previous back-of-the-envelope estimates.

Suggested Citation

  • Dolls, Mathias & Krolage, Carla, 2019. "The Effects of Early Retirement Incentives on Retirement Decisions," VfS Annual Conference 2019 (Leipzig): 30 Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall - Democracy and Market Economy 203486, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
  • Handle: RePEc:zbw:vfsc19:203486
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Riphahn, Regina T. & Schrader, Rebecca, 2023. "Reforms of an early retirement pathway in Germany and their labor market effects," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(3), pages 304-330, July.
    2. Marz, Waldemar & Goetzke, Frank, 2022. "CAFE in the city — A spatial analysis of fuel economy standards," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    3. Regina T. Riphahn & Rebecca Schrader, 2020. "Labor market effects of early retirement reforms," Working Papers 199, Bavarian Graduate Program in Economics (BGPE).
    4. Baksa, Daniel & Munkacsi, Zsuzsa & Nerlich, Carolin, 2020. "A framework for assessing the costs of pension reform reversals," Working Paper Series 2396, European Central Bank.
    5. Bonsang, Eric & van Soest, Arthur, 2020. "Time devoted to home production and retirement in couples: A panel data analysis," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Retirement age; early retirement; pension reform;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination
    • J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy
    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies

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