This paper contributes to the literature on old employment barriers by exploring empirically the relative importance of mental v.s. physical health in determining work. It combines regression and variance decomposition analyses to quantify the respective role of mental v.s. physical health. The...

Population ageing in Europe calls for an overall rise in the age of retirement. However, many argue that this age should be differentiated to account for individuals' career arduousness. This paper explores the relevance of this idea. It combines the 7th wave of the SHARE panel data on health at...

The primary policy response to population ageing in advanced economies has been to raise the mandatory retirement age. However, these policies have reignited calls for differentiated retirement ages that take into account variations in work intensity. This paper utilises microdata to examine the...

Population aging in Europe calls for an overall rise in the age of retirement. However, most observers agree that the latter should be differentiated to account for different individuals' heterogeneous health when they grow older. This paper explores the relevance of this idea using the European...

The rising cost of old-age dependency in Europe and elsewhere invariably leads to reforms aimed at raising the effective age or retirement. But do older individuals have the health/cognitive capacity to work longer? Following Cutler et al. (2012), this paper asks how much older individuals could...

Many recent reforms raise the age of retirement. But can all older individuals work longer? To answer that question this paper uses the European SHARE survey. Results are essentially fivefold. First, physical health and cognitive performance deteriorate with age. Second, the 50-54 employment...