Exploring the role of health in Early Retirement by occupational status: looking for the causes of the greying of the self-employed sector

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between early retirement and health by using a discrete duration model in order to check if some differences across employment status emerge. Using the European Community Household Panel (henceforth ECHP) covering the period 1994-2001, this work produces new empirical resultson the effect of the self-perceived health state to the decision to early retirement. The main hypothesis was to find differences between paid-employees and self-employees, however our results point to how the potential effects of health on the early retirement decision could be circumvented in paid-work thanks to employment protection legislation (for paid-employees) whereas in self-employment the real health status is a key determinantonthis decision.