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Pensions reforms, workforce ageing and firm-provided welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Giuseppe Croce
  • Andrea Ricci
  • Giuliana Tesauro

Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of an exogenous increase in the legal retirement age on the firms’ propensity to provide welfare services voluntarily to their employees. To this purpose we exploit a unique information derived from the Rilevazione su Imprese e Lavoro (RIL), a survey conducted in 2015 on a large and representative sample of Italian firms. Applying different regression models we show that firms which were forced to give up previously planned hirings because of the Law 201/2011 (the so-called ‘Fornero pension reform’), increased the probability of providing welfare services at workplace. By referring to the sociological, human resource management and economic literature we then argue that a sudden increase in the legal retirement age may motivate the employers to establish welfare schemes as a way to cope with an ageing workforce. Our findings also hold when propensity score matching methods are used in order to control for sample selection issues.

Suggested Citation

  • Giuseppe Croce & Andrea Ricci & Giuliana Tesauro, 2019. "Pensions reforms, workforce ageing and firm-provided welfare," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(32), pages 3480-3497, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:applec:v:51:y:2019:i:32:p:3480-3497
    DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2019.1581911
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