Health and Retirement Behavior

This externally funded project (U.S. National Institute of Aging, NIA, via the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California) seeks to analyze the determinants of retirement behavior in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States. In contrast to previous work on the subject matter, the aim is not only to illuminate the economic incentives for individual retirement decisions but to encompass a wide-ranging circle of determinants. Major variables that have so far largely been ignored or assessed in isolation include state of health, workplace conditions as well as the worker's familial and social environment. Alongside the principal goal of attaining comprehensive insight into retirement processes, the project also analyzes mistakes made in previous econometric studies due to the omission of potential determinants of retirement decisions.