Fatal Attraction? Extended Unemployment Benefits, Labor Force Exits, and Mortality
We estimate the causal effect of permanent and premature exits from the labor force on mortality. To overcome the problem of negative health selection into early retirement, we exploit a policy change in unemployment insurance rules in Austria that allowed workers in eligible regions to exit the labor force 3 years earlier compared to workers in non-eligible regions. Using administrative data with precise information on mortality and retirement, we find that the policy change induced eligible workers to exit the labor force significantly earlier. Instrumental variable estimation results show that for men retiring one year earlier causes a 6.8% increase in the risk of premature death and 0.2 years reduction in the age at death, but has no significant effect for women.
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Copy CitationAndreas Kuhn, Stefan Staubli, Jean-Philippe Wuellrich, and Josef Zweimüller, "Fatal Attraction? Extended Unemployment Benefits, Labor Force Exits, and Mortality," NBER Working Paper 25124 (2018), https://doi.org/10.3386/w25124.Download Citation
Non-Technical Summaries
- For blue-collar male workers in Austria, an extra year of early retirement, induced by a policy change, was associated with an...
Published Versions
Andreas Kuhn & Stefan Staubli & Jean-Philippe Wuellrich & Josef Zweimüller, 2019. "Fatal attraction? Extended unemployment benefits, labor force exits, and mortality," Journal of Public Economics, . citation courtesy of 
Fatal Attraction? Extended Unemployment Benefits, Labor Force Exits, and Mortality, Andreas Kuhn, Stefan Staubli, Jean-Philippe Wuellrich, Josef Zweimüller. in Inequality and Public Policy, Trans-Atlantic Public Economics Seminar 2018, Hoynes, Landais, and Spinnewijn. 2020
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