TY  - JOUR
AU  - Coile,Courtney
AU  - Gruber,Jonathan
TI  - Social Security and Retirement
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7830
PY  - 2000
Y2  - August 2000
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7830
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7830.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Courtney Coile
Department of Economics
Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA  02481
Tel: 781/283-2408
Fax: 781/283-2177
E-Mail: ccoile@wellesley.edu

Jonathan Gruber
MIT Department of Economics
E52-355
50 Memorial Drive
Cambridge, MA 02142-1347
Tel: 617/253-8892
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu
AB  - A critical question for Social Security policy is how program incentives affect retirement behavior.  We use the wealth of new data available through the Health and Retirement Survey (HRS) to examine the impact of Social Security incentives on male retirement.  We implement forward-looking models of retirement whereby individuals consider not just the incentives to work in the next year but in all future years as well.  We find that such forward looking incentive measures for Social Security are significant determinants of retirement decisions.  Our findings suggest that Social Security policies which increase the incentives to work at older ages can significantly reduce the exit rate of older workers from the labor force.
ER  -