Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/286978 
Authors: 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Citation: 
[Journal:] Review of Economics of the Household [ISSN:] 1573-7152 [Volume:] 20 [Issue:] 2 [Publisher:] Springer US [Place:] New York, NY [Year:] 2021 [Pages:] 419-445
Publisher: 
Springer US, New York, NY
Abstract: 
Many governments are aiming to extend working lives by raising the age at which people can claim retirement pensions. This makes it vital to understand how these policies affect retirement decisions. In this paper, I revisit the labor supply effects of a major Australian reform that increased women's pension age from 60 to 65. Atalay and Barrett (2015) studied these effects using repeated household surveys and a differences-in-differences design in which male cohorts form the comparison group. They estimate that the reform increased female labor force participation by 12 percentage points. Using earlier data, I show that the parallel-trends assumption did not hold before the reform because of a strong female-specific trend in participation rates across the relevant cohorts. Accounting for this trend, the estimated effect on female participation falls by two-thirds and becomes statistically insignificant at conventional levels. This highlights the importance of carefully assessing and controlling for trends across cohorts when evaluating pension reforms, which are typically phased in across cohorts.
Subjects: 
H55
J26
I38
Retirement age
Labor supply
Cohort effects
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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