Retirement and Health in Europe

Enrica Croda, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia

What is the impact of health on the retirement decisions of the elderly? Do institutions matter? This paper investigates the retirement decisions of older Europeans using the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). In particular, we analyze the role played by health factors and by social security and pension rules in shaping labor supply and retirement decisions. The preliminary results indicate that institutional differences in welfare systems clearly affect the distribution and the age pattern of participation to the labor market and of retirement. In addition, we find that there is potentially huge unused labor capacity in countries such as Austria, Italy and France where “healthy” individuals are not in the labor force.