Labor force participation at older ages has been rising in the Netherlands since the mid-nineteen-nineties. Reforms of the social security and pension systems have often been put forward as main explanations for this rise. However, participation rates above the normal retirement age of 65 have...

There have been a vast number of social security reforms aimed at increasing employment at older ages over the last two decades in the Netherlands. These reforms mainly lead to more stringent eligibility criteria for, and reduced generosity of, social security programs. Our empirical evidence...

Social networks and social interactions affect individual and social norms. We develop a direct test of this using Dutch survey data on how respondents evaluate work disability of hypothetical people with some work related health problem (vignettes). We analyze how the thresholds respondents use...

This paper presents information on labor market participation of the elderly, mortality and health, pathways to retirement and rates of participation in various earnings replacing programs in the Netherlands. It presents an overview of reforms to Disability Insurance (DI) and other income...

To analyze the effect of health on work, many studies use a simple self-assessed health measure based upon a question such as "do you have an impairment or health problem limiting the kind or amount of work you can do?" A possible drawback of such a measure is the possibility that different...

While financial knowledge has been linked to improved financial behavior, there is little consensus on the value of financial education, in part because rigorous evaluation of various programs has yielded mixed results. However, given the heterogeneity of financial education programs in the...

This paper investigates the role of pain in determining self-reported work disability in the US, the UK and The Netherlands. Even if identical questions are asked, cross-country differences in reported work disability remain substantial. In the US and the Netherlands, respondent evaluations of...

Compared to other industrialized countries, the labor force participation of the elderly in the Netherlands is very low. Moreover, it has fallen very fast over recent years. We discuss the incentives for employees to retire, arising from public schemes such as social security and disability...

This paper analyzes retirement saving and portfolio choice in the United States, Italy, and the Netherlands. While these countries enjoy roughly the same standard of living, they vary widely in their institutional organization of retirement income provisions. Building on extensions of the life...

Eligible participants in the U.S. Social Security system may claim benefits anytime from age 62-70, with benefit levels actuarially adjusted based on the claiming age. This paper shows that individual intentions with regard to Social Security claiming ages are sensitive to how the early versus...