The Role of the Spouse in Early Retirement Decisions for Older Workers

This paper investigates the determinants of older workers' early retirement behavior in Denmark. Instead of considering dual retirement we recognize the importance of the spouse in the early retirement decision by assessing the effect of a rich number of spousal variables. Given the grouped nature of the data we set up a semi-parametric single risk grouped duration proportional hazard model accounting for right censoring and allows for time-varying covariates, a nonparametric baseline and unobserved heterogeneity. We find that spousal characteristics do influence the retirement decision and significant gender asymmetries also exist in the effects of spouse's characteristics.Classification-JEL: J26, C41.Early Retirement, Gender Asymmetries, Spousal Effects, Duration analysis, Grouped data, Unobserved heterogeneity.