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Pension reforms and partial retirement

4 July 2025

Most Western countries are abolishing early retirement schemes and increasing the statutory retirement age to stimulate employment among older workers. However, many people are unwilling or unable to work full-time until a higher statutory retirement age. We study whether incentives for partial retirement can complement traditional policies to stimulate labour participation at old age. We combine administrative data from the largest Dutch pension fund (ABP) and Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and exploit two pension reforms implemented in 2006 and 2011 to understand (partial) retirement decisions. We estimate a model of consumption, saving, and retirement to quantify the effect of different incentives for partial retirement on labour supply. Our research has direct implications for the design of flexible pension schemes in the Netherlands or other countries.

Picture by Natalia Blauth For Unsplash+