Joint Retirement Decision of Couples in Europe

This study examines the effect of partial and full retirement decision of the spouse on the individual’s partial and full retirement decision using SHARE dataset and ordered probit reduced form model. Partner’s retirement status is predicted using eligibility status of the individual for normal and early retirement. Results show that while the probability of wife’s partial retirement increases the probability of their husband’s full and partial retirement, their full retirement has a negative impact on their husband’s both retirement statuses. On the other hand, for women, husband’s retirement decision has a slight positive effect on their probability of retirement and the probabilities of partial and full retirement of the husbands have no significant impact for them. This implies that although women are slightly affected by their husband’s retirement decision overall, their decision do not differ by the type of their partner’s retirement.