When Social Security’s Full Retirement Age (FRA) increased to age 66 for recent retirees, the peak retirement age increased with it. However, a large share of people continue to claim their Social Security benefits at age 65. This paper explores two potential explanations for the “stickiness” of age 65 as a claiming age: Medicare eligibility and workers’ lack of knowledge about their future Social Security benefits.

When looking at a researcher of today it is obvious that he/she is no longer staying at one university or other public or private research centre throughout his/her career, but is moving from one country to another, frequently and for shorter periods of time or is even working (be it sometimes under different statuses) in several countries at the same time. When the researcher of today retires his/her career path has been one of many different employers and can even be one of different statuses (employee, selfemployed,…).

Valget mellom å gå av med pensjon eller fortsette i arbeid påvirkes av en rekke faktorer. Denne analysen viser at helsetilstanden, tidspunktet for ektefellens pensjonsbeslutning og om man er ansatt i en bedrift med avtalefestet pensjon, er de tre som har hatt størst effekt på denne avgjørelsen. Dette er hovedkonklusjonen fra en analyse basert på data fra 2001 til 2011, som beregner sannsynligheten for at arbeidstakere i alderen 61 til 69 år fortsatt står i jobb ett år senere.

Earlier studies conclude that spouses' retirement strategies are not independent from each other and that policies affecting individuals in a couple are also likely to affect the economic behaviour of their partner.

This report details the key findings of the third record keeping survey, conducted among a representative sample of trust and contract-based pension schemes with two or more members. The sample for the research was extracted from The Pensions Regulator’s (the regulator) own SCORE database.

Disability is a permanent unexpected shock to labor supply which according to the theory of the added worker effect should induce a large spousal labor supply response. The Disability Insurance (DI) program is designed to mitigate the income lost due to disability. To the extent that it does this, it can crowd out the spousal labor supply response predicted by the added worker effect theory.

Early retirement from regular employment provides a major challenge to social and health policies in Europe. “As people older than 60 will comprise close to one third of the population in several European countries over the next two decades, a shrinking number of economically active people will have to support a growing number of economically dependent elderly people” (SHARE, 2009, p.5). There is, therefore, a political focus on the need to maintain workers longer in employment. An example of this European endeavour is the declaration by the European Council (Stockholm, March 2001) that claimed that by 2010 at least half of the EU population aged between 55 and 64 shall be in employment.

Over the last 30 years, 401(k) and other defined contribution retirement plans have displaced defined benefit pension plans in the private sector (US). Defined benefit plans traditionally provided benefits in the form of a lifetime annuity. In contrast, in 401(k) plans, annuitization is voluntary, rare, and often not even a plan option. Participants face the challenge of decumulating their wealth over their remaining lifetimes, trading off the risk of outliving that wealth against the cost of unnecessarily restricting their consumption.

The old Swedish pension system combined both Beveridgean features – in the form of a
universal tax-financed flat-rate basic pension (folkpension) and pension supplements – and a
Bismarckian insurance system – the earnings-related contribution-financed defined-benefit
allmän tilläggspension (ATP) – that guaranteed very generous and encompassing protection
against old age risk. The ATP system entered serious fiscal difficulties from the 1980s, when
a 10-year long reform effort started.

In OECD countries, generous pension policy schemes, particularly those which existed during the 1980s and early 1990s, have been advocated as being responsible for the early retirement of workers from the labour force. Italy stands out among the OECD countries as having the highest pension deficit: in 2008, it was 14.1% of GDP compared to the OECD average of 7%, and increased by 23% over the period 1995-2005 (OECD). The Italian pension system is designed on a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) basis; older workers still receive their pensions under the defined benefit (DB) scheme, whereas the shift to the notional defined contribution (NDC) scheme will affect younger generations.