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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Retirement of spouses and social security reform
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Josef Falkinger
  • Rudolf Winter-Ebmer
  • Josef Zweimüller
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title European Economic Review
Publisher Elsevier
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 0014-2921
Volume 40
Number 2
Page Range 449 - 472
Date 1996
Abstract Text The retirement decisions of spouses may be interdependent for various reasons: similarity of tastes, joint assets, sharing rules for income and housework, or complementarity of leisure. Because of data limitations, only a few empirical studies exist on this topic. From a policy point of view interdependent retirement could become important if legislators in different EC countries are forced to synchronize minimum retirement ages, which are lower now for females than males in a number of countries. In the theoretical part, the reaction of spouses to changes in the retirement age of their partners is analysed for typical family patterns. In the empirical part, the possibility of interdependent retirement is studied for Austrian data. The findings show an asymmetry: husbands react to changes in wives' legal minimum retirement age, wives don't react vice versa. The cross effect on men's participation rates -- resulting from a rise in women's minimum retirement age --is almost half as big as the first-round effect upon the women themselves.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1016/0014-2921(95)00019-4
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