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Employer Provided Health Insurance and Retirement Behavior

Author : Alan L. Gustman

Publisher :

Page : 64 pages

File Size : 21,39 MB

Release : 1993

Category : Employee fringe benefits

ISBN :

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Book Description

This paper analyzes the effects on retirement of employer provided health benefits to workers and retirees. Retiree health benefits delay retirement until age of eligibility, and then accelerate it. With a base case of no retiree health coverage, granting retiree health coverage to all those with employer coverage while working accelerates retirement age by less than one month. Valuing benefits at costs of private health insurance to unaffiliated individuals, rather than at group rates, increases the effect. Ignoring retiree health benefits in retirement models creates only a small bias. Changing health insurance policies has a small effect on retirement.



The Effects of Health Insurance and Self-Insurance on Retirement Behavior

Author : Eric French

Publisher :

Page : 0 pages

File Size : 38,96 MB

Release : 2008

Category :

ISBN :

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Book Description

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the effect of employer-provided health insurance and Medicare in determining retirement behavior. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we estimate the first dynamic programming model of retirement that accounts for both saving and uncertain medical expenses. Our results suggest that uncertainty and saving are both important. We find that workers value health insurance well in excess of its actuarial cost, and that access to health insurance has a significant effect on retirement behavior, which is consistent with the empirical evidence. As a result, shifting the Medicare eligibility age to 67 would cause a significant retirement delay - as large as the delay from shifting the Social Security normal retirement age from 65 to 67.



Health Insurance and Early Retirement

Author : Jonathan Gruber

Publisher :

Page : 60 pages

File Size : 36,83 MB

Release : 1993

Category : Health insurance

ISBN :

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Book Description

Although the vast majority of working individuals aged 55-64 receive health insurance coverage through their employment, many of these individuals face the prospect of losing such coverage should they retire before becoming eligible for guaranteed public coverage through Medicare at age 65. Because the expected medical expenses of this group are large and uncertain, the availability of health insurance coverage after retirement could be a key factor in the retirement decision of older workers. We examine the effect of health insurance on retirement by looking at variation in state and federal 'continuation of coverage' mandates, laws which allow individuals to continue purchasing health insurance through a previous employer for a specified number of months after leaving the firm. By allowing individuals to maintain their employer-provided health insurance after retirement, these laws decrease the cost of early retirement for those who do not have other retiree health insurance available. Using data on 55-64 year old men from the Current Population Survey, we find that one year of continuation benefits increases the probability of being retired by 1 percentage point; this represents a 5.4 percent increase in the baseline probability of being retired for this group. We also find that continuation mandates increase the likelihood of being insured after retirement.



Assessing Knowledge of Retirement Behavior

Author : Panel on Retirement Income Modeling

Publisher : National Academies Press

Page : 288 pages

File Size : 40,4 MB

Release : 1996-08-13

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0309589533

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Book Description

This book brings together in one volume what researchers have learned about workers, employers, and retirees that is important for formulating retirement income policies. As the U.S. population ages, there is increasing uncertainty about the solvency of the Social Security and Medicare systems and the adequacy of private pensions to provide for people's retirement needs. The volume covers such critical behaviors as workers' decisions to retire, people's choices of saving over consumption, and employers' decisions about hiring older workers and providing pension and health care benefits. Also covered are trends in mortality, health status, and health care costs that are key to projecting the likely costs and effects of alternative retirement income security policies and a strategy for combining data and research knowledge into a policy modeling framework.





Health Insurance and Retirement Behavior

Author : Jeannette A. Rogowski

Publisher :

Page : 47 pages

File Size : 47,33 MB

Release : 1997*

Category : Health insurance

ISBN :

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Book Description

This paper studies the role of health insurance in the retirement decisions of older workers. As policymakers consider mechanisms for how to increase access to affordable health insurance for the near elderly, considerations of the potential labor force implications of such policies will be important to consider -- potentially inducing retirement just at a time when labor force is shrinking. Using data from the 1992 and 1996 waves of the Health and Retirement Survey, this study demonstrates that access to post-retirement health insurance has a large effect on retirement. Among older male workers, those with retiree health benefit offers are 68% more likely to retire (and those with non-employment based insurance are 44% more likely to retire) than their counterparts who would lose employment-based health insurance upon retirement. In addition, the study demonstrated that in retirement models, when retiree health benefits are controlled for, the effects of pension coverage are reduced, suggesting that these effects may have been overestimated in the prior literature.





Retiree Health Benefits and Retirement

Author :

Publisher :

Page : pages

File Size : 30,3 MB

Release : 2006

Category : Health insurance

ISBN :

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Book Description

Employer-provided health benefit coverage for workers who retire before age 65 has fallen over the last decade. We examine a cohort of male workers from the Health and Retirement Survey to examine questions about the dynamics of retiree health benefits and the relationship between retiree health benefits and retirement behavior, which is important for the debate over increasing health coverage for older Americans without reducing work incentives. On dynamics, we find that between 1992 and 1996, 24 percent of full-time workers who had retiree health benefits lost their coverage, while 15 percent of full-time workers who lacked coverage gained it. Also, of the full-time employed men who were covered by retiree health benefits in 1992 and had retired by 1996, 3 percent were uninsured, and 15 percent were covered by health insurance other than employer-provided insurance. On the relationship between retiree health benefits and retirement, we find that workers with retiree benefits were 29 to 55 percent more likely to retire than those without. We also find that workers who are eligible for retiree health benefits tend to take advantage of them when they are relatively young.



The Role of Retiree Health Insurance in the Employment Behavior of Older Men

Author : David M. Blau

Publisher :

Page : 55 pages

File Size : 20,14 MB

Release : 2003

Category : Employee fringe benefits

ISBN :

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Book Description

We model the employment and medical care decisions of older men who face health risk. The budget constraint incorporates detailed characteristics of health insurance as well as Social Security and private pensions. A man whose health insurance is tied to continued employment with his current employer faces the risk of large medical expenditures in the event of an adverse health shock if he retires before becoming eligible for Medicare at age 65. A man whose employer provides retiree health insurance or who has access to other health insurance not tied to his employment decision (e.g., from his wife) can retire before age 65 without consequences for his health insurance coverage. We use data from the Health and Retirement Survey to estimate the parameters of the model using structural methods. Simulations based on the estimates imply that changes in health insurance, including access and restrictions to retiree health insurance and Medicare have a modest impact on employment behavior among older males.



Employer-Sponsored Health and Retirement Benefits

Author : Barbara Bovbjerg

Publisher : DIANE Publishing

Page : 60 pages

File Size : 42,47 MB

Release : 2007-12

Category : Business & Economics

ISBN : 9781422317204

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Book Description

Many U.S. workers receive health & pension benefits from employers, & the cost of these benefits represents a growing share of workers¿ total compensation. Employers have made changes to control these rising costs, contending that these changes will allow them to remain competitive in an increasingly global market. This report examines the practices employers are using to control the costs of benefits. To evaluate changing employer benefit practices & their implications, the author examined: (1) current & emerging practices employers are using to control the costs of health care benefits, & retirement benefits; & (2) employers¿ workforce restructuring changes. Charts & tables.