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Delaying Retirement to Pay for College

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  • Elizabeth Weber Handwerker

Abstract

Does sending children to college affect the contemporaneous labor supply of older workers? Drawing on biennial waves of the Health and Retirement Survey from 1992–2006, the author tracks the labor supply of parents before and after they send their children to college and shows that parents delay retirement while they are financing their children's college education. Controlling for the total number of children who ever attend college and the total number of those whose college expenses are paid for by older parents, she finds that mothers and fathers are more likely to be working (by 10.5 percentage points for fathers and by 6.9 percentage points for mothers), less likely to be collecting Social Security benefits, and less likely to report that they are retired if they are currently paying for a child's college education. Of those working, there is little evidence that paying for a child's education has any impact on work intensity.

Suggested Citation

  • Elizabeth Weber Handwerker, 2011. "Delaying Retirement to Pay for College," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 64(5), pages 921-948, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:64:y:2011:i:5:p:921-948
    DOI: 10.1177/001979391106400505
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Kristy Fan & Tyler J. Fisher & Andrew A. Samwick, 2021. "The Insurance Value of Financial Aid," NBER Working Papers 28669, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Butrica, Barbara A. & Karamcheva, Nadia S, 2020. "Is Rising Household Debt Affecting Retirement Decisions?," IZA Discussion Papers 13182, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Andrea Smith-Hunter & James Nolan & Margaret Carpenter, 2019. "Relationships Between College Costs And College Funding: Evidence From The United States," Business Education and Accreditation, The Institute for Business and Finance Research, vol. 11(1), pages 1-17.
    4. Braga, Breno & Malkova, Olga, 2020. "Hope for the Family: The Effects of College Costs on Maternal Labor Supply," IZA Discussion Papers 12958, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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