Policy makers have often argued that an additional benefit of facilitating early retirement is that it creates employment for the young. This may happen if older and younger workers are substitutes. Nowadays policy makers’ goals are to discourage early retirement to counter the economic...

This paper uses data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe to examine the home care received by elderly in Western Europe. Specifically, we relate the demand for home care to the health status of the elderly household members and like previous studies find that health...

In 1995, the UK government legislated to increase the earliest age at which women could claim a state pension from 60 to 65 between April 2010 and March 2020. This paper uses data from the first two years of this change coming into effect to estimate the impact of increasing the state pension...

This paper examines whether maternity leave policies have a causal effect on women's mental health in old age. We link data for women aged 50 and above from eight countries in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to data on maternity leave legislation from 1960 to 2010....

The paper provides a perspective on the development of the Belgian disability insurance system. Using both survey and administrative data, it sketches a picture of the (changing) factors leading towards disability, as well as the outcomes in terms of program participation. The paper shows the...

The paper studies retirement behavior of wage‐earners in Belgium – for the first time using rich survey data to explore retirement incentives as faced by individuals. Specifically, we use SHARE data to estimate a model à la Stock and Wise (1990). Exploring the longitudinal nature of...

Many Belgian retire well before the statutory retirement age. Numerous exit routes from the labor force can be identified: old‐age pensions, conventional early retirement, disability insurance, and unemployment insurance are the most prominent ones. We analyze the retirement decision of...

We provide an overview of the institutional framework in Belgium that is of relevance for labor market participation and retirement decision at older ages. We then describe key labor market indicators using data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) over the period 1983‐2013 and also present...

We study retirement incentives with augmented option value model à la Stock and Wise (1990). We propose methodological extensions to better reflect the respective incentives faced by singles and couples. Our results show that a more comprehensive modelling of couples' incentives leads to very...

This paper investigates what motivates intergenerational time and money transfers. We consider a model in which transfers may be driven not only by altruism, but also by exchange considerations. We use data from SHARE to discriminate between the two motives. We show that both if we consider...