Spousal influence on early retirement behavior

Abstract: In this paper, we use a binary choice panel data model to analyze married individuals.retirement behavior in Norway when a new option, AFP early retirement becomes available. We focus our study on the influence of the spouse.s characteristics on early retirement behavior. We find the directions of spousal e¤ects are quite symmetric but women seem to have a much stronger response to their spouses' characteristics than men. The comparison of di¤erent specifications indicates that correct modeling of the error term covariance structure in a panel data binary choice model is quite important. Keywords: Retirement, Spousal Influence, Panel Data, Random Effects