Social Security and Retirement around the World (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report)

What accounts for the striking decline in labor force participation at increasingly younger ages? Social Security and Retirement around the World examines one explanation: social security programs actually provide incentives for early retirement. This volume houses a set of remarkable papers that present information on the social security systems, and labor force participation patterns, in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. "This book is highly recommended for the serious student of retirement age trends and social security old-age pension policies of industrial nations in a cross-national context." Martin B. Tracy, __Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare__ “A path-breaking public-policy study. The authors consistently use a new methodology to evaluate the consequences of retirement systems on the behavior of older workers in eleven industrialized countries. In doing so, the book passes a major test of any conference volume the whole greatly exceeds the sum of its parts. This book without question provides the most consistent cross-national analyses of the work disincentives of retirement programs ever produces. Moreover it will serve as the model for all future efforts of this kind.” __Journal of Economics__ Social Security and Retirement around the World presents comparable descriptive data and analytic calculations for each of the eleven countries discussed. The chapters begin with a description of the historical evolution of labor force participation and then present data on the current age-specific activities and income sources of men and women. Each paper then goes on to describe the institutional features of the country's social security system, highlighting any interactions with other public and private programs that might also influence retirement behavior. At the core of each chapter is a detailed analysis of the retirement incentives inherent in the provisions of that country's retirement income system. Through this process of analysis, the individual studies provide a means of comparing the retirement incentives among the nations.