Does A Heavy Occupations Pension Program Make People Retire Early?

In this paper I look whether a voluntary heavy occupations pension program make people in
those occupations retire earlier. In order to do so, I exploit the Austrian pension system, which
implemented an early retirement program for heavy occupations in 2007. Using different waves
of Share data, I use a difference-in-difference approach as well as a logistic regression to answer
the above question. My main findings are that the introduction of a heavy labor pension did not
lead to a significant decrease in the retirement age for workers in heavy occupations. I do find
that own ill health is one of the main indicators for workers to retire early. Potential explanations
for not finding a decrease in the retirement age are already existing partial retirement programs
(social support substitution) – which workers in heavy occupation jobs may as well use – or a
lack of knowledge about the program.