Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84 Page 85 Page 86 Page 87 Page 88 Page 89 Page 90 Page 91 Page 92 Page 93 Page 94 Page 95 Page 96 Page 97 Page 98 Page 99 Page 100 Page 101 Page 102 Page 103 Page 104 Page 105 Page 106 Page 107 Page 108WORK & RETIREMEN T 48 As more and more women enter the workforce, researchers have become interested in how retire- ment incentives interact in two-earner families. Johnson et al. (2000) used four waves of HRS data to describe the joint retirement decisions of husbands and wives. They found that people were less likely to retire if their spouses were still working than if their spouses had already retired. If one spouse had stopped working involuntarily because of health problems, though, the other spouse was less likely to retire than if the spouse had voluntarily retired. Using HRS data from 1992 to 2000 along with linked pension information, Coile (2003b) argues that women are highly influenced by their own economic incentives when making retirement decisions and are not simply following the leads of their husbands. Gustman and Steinmeier (2002b), looking at the value that respondents placed on joint leisure time, found that this measure accounted for much of the household interdependence in retirement decisions. Another factor that may influence people’s retirement decisions is involuntary job loss. Past research on the effects of job loss often excluded consideration of older workers, because it was difficult to distinguish between “normal” retire- ment and job displacement. HRS data afford the possibility to track transitions into and out of the labor force. A multi-wave study of such transitions among older workers found large and persistent effects of job loss on the likelihood of future em- ployment (Chan and Huff Stevens 2001). Looking at people 2 years after they lost a job at age 55, labor force participation rates were 60 percent for men and 55 percent for women, compared with more than 80 percent for people who had not suffered job displacement. Four years after a job loss, there was still a gap of about 20 percent between the displaced and nondisplaced groups. Health Versus Financial Factors Many studies have explored the relationship between health and retirement, but they often have differed in their conclusions as to whether health or financial variables are more important in the decision to retire. Some of the difference is attributed to problems with correctly measuring health status and some to the belief that individu- als may report poor health as a justification for early retirement. One analysis of early HRS data (McGarry 2002) found that subjective reports of health more strongly influence the transition to retirement than do financial variables. Poor health was strongly correlated with the decision to leave the labor force. These important but basically unsettled questions about health reasons versus financial reasons for retirement are the subject of continuing research. The Role of Medicare and Private Health Insurance HRS data have been used to probe the com- plex relationship between health insurance and retirement behavior. For example, HRS data have proven valuable in simulating the impact of raising the age of Medicare eligibility as one measure for maintaining the solvency of Medicare, the Fed- eral health insurance program for people age 65 and older. One analysis implied that increasing the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 would reduce overall retirement rates by less than 5 per- cent (Johnson 2001). Approaching the issue from a different angle, other research concluded that expanding the Medicare program to cover people ages 62 to 64 would result in a modest increase (7 percent) in the retirement rate among work- ers who currently lack employer-sponsored health benefits (Johnson et al. 2003). These intriguing findings open the door to additional studies in this arena. Researchers have employed HRS data to exam- ine other aspects of the role of health insurance in retirement decisions. These studies generally reach the same conclusion—that health insurance costs discourage retirement, but only modestly. For example, Blau and Gilleskie (2003) found that health insurance costs have a relatively small impact on labor force participation at older ages, at least among men. One important factor is whether or not an individual’s employer-provided health insurance coverage continues after he or she leaves the job. HRS data also show that workers whose coverage continues are more apt to leave the labor force early (e.g., at age 62) than are workers whose health insurance is “tied” to actually being employed (French and Jones 2004). Diseases and Retirement Another important use of HRS data has been to estimate the economic impact of particular diseases in terms of workforce participation and early retirement. For example, a study that fol- lowed diabetics in the original (1992) HRS cohort over an 8-year period revealed major income and productivity losses associated with the disease (Vijan et al. 2004). Extrapolating results to the national level, the researchers estimated that the total income loss for those who were disabled at baseline was already an incremental $60 billion relative to people without diabetes. Over the 8- year study period, individuals disabled by diabetes lost another $15 billion in productivity. Further, the diabetes-related increase in incident risk of disability, mortality, sick days, and retirement led to $59 billion in lost productivity over the same period. The study authors note that, with the rising incidence of diabetes in the United States, future losses in workforce participation from dia- betes are likely to be even greater.