Early retirement across Europe. Does non-standard employment increase participation of older workers
Pension savings and consumption needs of current and future retirees
In many European countries, the labor market participation of older workers is considerably lower than the labor market participation of prime-age workers. This study analyzes the variation in labor marketwithdrawal of older workers across 13 European countries over the period 1995-2008. We seek to contribute to existing macro-econometric studies by taking non-standard employment into account, by relating the empirical model more explicitly to optional value model theory on retirement decisions and by using a two-step IV-GMM estimator to deal with endogeneity issues. The analysis leads to the conclusionthat part-time employment is negatively related to labor market withdrawal of older men. This relationship is less strong among women. Additionally, we find that part-time employment at older agesdoes not decrease the average actual hours worked. Furthermore, the results show a positive relationship between unemployment among older workers and early retirement similar to previous studies.