The Dutch government abolished mandatory retirement for national-level civil servants in 2008, but not for employees in other sectors. This study analyzes whether national-level civil servants have different attitudes and plans about working beyond normal retirement age than employees in other sectors.

The Nordic Council of Ministers funded the project "The impact of the working environment on work retention of older workers" to prepare a comparative overview on the current knowledge on determinants of work participation for older workers in the Nordic countries, with particular emphasis on the impact of the working environment.

This paper uses a micro-simulation model to analyze the future housing debt position of specific groups of Dutch mortgage owners, such as starters and the self-employed, around the time of their future retirement. Our analysis shows that most household debt is in interest-only (IO) loans, which cease being fiscally deductible 30 years after origination— in most cases around the time of the mortgagor’s retirement.

Radical changes have been implemented to pension schemes across the UK public sector from April 2015. This paper simulates how these changes will affect the lifetime pension and how the negotiated pension changes compare across six public sector schemes by level of education. Specifically, we simulate the occupation specific Defined Benefit (DB) pension wealth accumulated for a representative employee over the lifecycle by factoring in the recent changes to pension conditions.

Student loan debt was $1.2 trillion in 2015, compared to just $0.2 trillion in 2003. It now accounts for more than 30 percent of total household non-mortgage debt, having surpassed credit card debt in 2011. The average student debt level for recent college students in 2013 was $31,000.1 The question is whether starting out $31,000 in the hole could have a big impact on households’ retirement preparedness.

In this paper we study the effects on the survival rate in employment of a scheme that facilitates gradual retirement through working time reductions. We use information on the entire labour market career and other observables to control for selection and take dynamic treatment assignment into account. We also estimate a competing risks model considering different (possibly selective) pathways to early retirement.

The average 401(k) account balance of workers who participated consistently in a 401(k) plan from year-end 2007 to year-end 2013 increased significantly between 2012 and 2013, according to an updated annual study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and the Investment Company Institute (ICI).

Using Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data, this paper examines how changes in individual workers’ past and present pension coverage, retirement incentives in Social Security, and retiree health insurance have contributed to retirement decisions for the 1931-1953 birth cohorts.

Working longer is a powerful lever to enhance retirement security.  Individuals should be able to extend the number of years they work because, on average, they are healthier, live longer, and face less physically demanding jobs.  But averages are misleading when discrepancies in health, job prospects, and life expectancy have widened between individuals with low and high socioeconomic status (SES). 

There is a persistent association between health and portfolio choice, but hardly anything is known about the underlying sources of heterogeneity: what makes healthier individuals hold more risky assets?

Survey data show that many respondents save for retirement in unconventional retirement accounts, such as investments in real estate. In countries where retirement savings are not mandatory for self-employed, representatives of this group often report this as an argument against making retirement savings compulsory.