Rewards to Continued Work: The Economic Incentives For Postponing Retirement

Using a new data file on pay and pensions, this paper presents and discusses new empirical evidence on how olde rworkers' income opportunities change as they age. It also develops a detailed description of private pension structures and the ways in which pensions reward deferred retirement. The data imply that the present discounted value of total lifetime income rises when people postpone retirement, but the size of the income increment varies with age. The data also show that some pension plans encourage early retirement while others penalize it.