Determinants of Retirement Status

This work analyzes how different factors related with health, demographics, behavior, financial status, and macroeconomics can affect retirement status in European Union countries. Linear probability model is used as an estimation method for data collected from the SHARE Wave 2 dataset and UN sources. The results are interpreted and the impacts of these factors are explained comparing them with the results already provided in the academic literature. Also results for New EU Member States and Old Member States are compared and the differences are explained. We find that males are less likely to be retired compared with females in New Member States, which is the opposite result than we find for Old Member States. The reasons for these results can be the facts that significant gender wage gap exists in New Member States, household sizes are bigger in these countries than in Old Member States and males play important role in household income which make them retire less than females.