Working Paper: NBER ID: w21939
Authors: Courtney Coile; Kevin S. Milligan; David A. Wise
Abstract: This is the introduction and summary to the seventh phase of an ongoing project on Social Security Programs and Retirement Around the World. The project compares the experiences of a dozen developed countries and uses differences in their retirement program provisions to explore the effect of SS on retirement and related questions. The first three phases of this project document that: 1) incentives for retirement from SS are strongly correlated with labor force participation rates across countries; 2) within countries, workers with stronger incentives to delay retirement are more likely to do so; and 3) changes to SS could have substantial effects on labor force participation and government finances. The fourth volume explores whether higher employment among older persons might increase youth unemployment and finds no link between the two. The fifth and sixth volumes focus on the disability insurance (DI) program, finding that changes in DI participation are more closely linked to DI reforms than to changes in health and that reducing access to DI would raise labor supply. \nThis seventh phase of the project explores whether older people are healthy enough to work longer. We use two main methods to estimate the health capacity to work, asking how much older individuals today could work if they worked as much as those with the same mortality rate in the past or as younger individuals in similar health. Both methods suggest there is significant additional health capacity to work at older ages.
Keywords: Social Security; Retirement Programs; Health Capacity to Work; Older Ages
JEL Codes: H31; H55; I19; J14; J26
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Health improvements (I14) | Increase in capacity to work (E22) |
| Higher health levels (I19) | Greater employment capacity (J23) |
| Health improvements and policy changes (I14) | Potential for increased employment among healthier older adults (J26) |
| Mortality rates decrease (I14) | Employment rates do not increase correspondingly (J68) |
| Decrease in mortality (I12) | Increase in health (I19) |
| Increase in health (I19) | Increase in capacity to work (E22) |
| Predicted share of older individuals capable of working (J26) | Actual employment figures (J68) |