Partners' Leisure Time Truly Together Upon Retirement

Elena Stancanelli,Arthur Van Soest

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2433427

Abstract

Externalities in leisure are an important determinant of partners’ retirement strategies. This is the first study that quantifies the extent to which partners actually spend more leisure time 'together' upon retirement. Exploiting the law on retirement age in France, we apply a regression discontinuity approach to identify the effect of retirement on partners’ hours of leisure, separate or together. Using four different definitions of 'togetherness' of partners’ leisure hours, we find that the separate leisure demand of the husband increases dramatically upon his retirement and this effect is robust to all sample cuts and specification checks. The wife’s retirement increases significantly her separate leisure demand as well as the partners’ joint leisure time. However, the latter effects are sensitive to the sample cut adopted. We conclude that upon controlling for the endogeneity of retirement in partners’ leisure demands, retirement increases only moderately the leisure time truly together of partners and by no more than other activities such as notably separate leisure or house work hours.

Highlights

1 Introduction Many retirement studies conclude that an important explanation for the fact that partners retire together are complementarities in leisure, implying that the utility of leisure time increases if leisure is enjoyed together with the partner (Hurd 1990; Gustman and Steinmeier 2000, 2004; Coile 2004; An et al 2004; Casanova 2010)
We investigated whether partners carry out household work together, using a similar approach as to construct their joint leisure hours
Considering the common case where the husband retires first, we find that if the husband retires, the time that becomes available is mostly spent on home production and separate leisure activities

Summary

Introduction

Many retirement studies conclude that an important explanation for the fact that partners retire together are complementarities in leisure, implying that the utility of leisure time increases if leisure is enjoyed together with the partner (Hurd 1990; Gustman and Steinmeier 2000, 2004; Coile 2004; An et al 2004; Casanova 2010). This is the first study that investigates the extent to which partners do spend more leisure time together upon retirement. The individual retirement implies a positive externality for the partner’s leisure Earlier studies used this argument in models explaining the retirement decisions of spouses but did not have at hand actual data on partners’ leisure activities undertaken together. An et al (2004)

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion