Early retirement for early starters - A well targeted policy for people with high job demand?

For the empirical analysis they use high-quality administrative data from the Federal Employment Agency covering the complete employment biographies of individuals and including information about the job strain at the occupational level. They exploit policy variation induced by the pension reform using two complementary identification strategies: Difference in Differences and Regression Discontinuity Design. The reform reduced average labor market exit age by between six to seven months corresponding to three to 3.5 months for each year the FRA was lowered. The effect is stronger for individuals working in demanding occupations and for individuals with higher incomes. Disentangling job strain into physical and psychosocial job strain does not reveal different effects between both measures of job demand.