Is an early retirement offer good for your health? Quasi-experimental evidence from the army

Abstract

This paper studies empirically the consequences on health of an early retirement offer. To this end we use a targeted retirement offer to military officers 55 years of age or older. Before the offer was implemented, the normal retirement age in the Swedish defense was 60 years of age. Estimating the effect of the offer on individuals’ health within the age range 56–70, we find support for a reduction in both mortality and in inpatient care as a consequence of the early retirement offer. Increasing the mandatory retirement age may thus not only have positive government income effects but also negative effects on increasing government health care expenditures.