IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecorec/v101y2025i334p323-347.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Pensions and Participation: Evidence From World War II Veterans in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • David Rodgers
  • George Kudrna
  • Alan Woodland

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of World War II (WWII) service on the labour force participation (LFP) of older Australian men in the second half of the twentieth century. Leveraging substantial variation in service rates across birth cohorts, we estimate the causal effect of military service on retirement behaviour. We find that WWII service led to a pronounced decline in LFP—by more than 20 percentage points—for men aged 60–64. This decline is primarily driven by veterans' earlier eligibility for public retirement benefits, particularly the Service Pension, which was accessible from age 60. Supporting this interpretation, survey data from the 1970s indicate that veterans expected to retire earlier than non‐veterans. Furthermore, differences in education, employment history and income do not fully explain the observed gap in retirement expectations, underscoring the role of veteran‐specific retirement provisions in shaping labour supply at older ages.

Suggested Citation

  • David Rodgers & George Kudrna & Alan Woodland, 2025. "Pensions and Participation: Evidence From World War II Veterans in Australia," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 101(334), pages 323-347, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecorec:v:101:y:2025:i:334:p:323-347
    DOI: 10.1111/1475-4932.12876
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-4932.12876
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1475-4932.12876?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecorec:v:101:y:2025:i:334:p:323-347. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esausea.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.