| Abstract: |
This study investigates old European couples' retirement choices in order to
bridge the gap between the European and the American literature. The typical
European family approaching retirement is a dual-earner family: the dataset
used in this paper reveals that 78 percent of working males is married, and
amongst these 24 percent has a working wife. This results from dramatic
changes in the labor force behaviour of both older men and older women after
World War II. These trends signal a need of investigating retirement choices
at a household level. Using an absolutely new international micro data (SHARE,
Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe - Release 2), we adopt a
duration analysis approach and estimate both single and competing risks models
by allowing for a exible speci cation with and without unobserved
heterogeneity. Our ndings show that joint retirement is signi cantly
correlated with education, age, and health status, together with partner's
employment status, partner's education and partner's health status. We also
perform a sensitivity analysis in order to check whether the results on the
correlation of health status are robust to two alternative measures of health
which possibly correct for subjectivity and cross-country incomparability of
self-reported health. We nd that allowing for dierent exit routes and taking
into account partner's characteristics is critical to fully understand joint
retirement. |