RETIREMENT OF SPOUSES AND SOCIAL-SECURITY REFORM

The retirement decisions of spouses may be interdependent for various reasons: similarity of tastes, joint assets, sharing rules for income and housework, or complementarity of leisure. Because of data limitati ons, only a few empirical studies exist on this topic. From a policy p oint of view, the understanding of interdependent retirement decisions should become important if legislators in different European countrie s are forced to synchronise minimum retirement ages for men and women which are lower now for females in a number of countries. We study the possibility of interdependent retirement using Austrian data. The fin dings show an asymmetry: husbands react to changes in wives' legal min imum retirement age, wives don't react vice versa. The cross-effect on men's participation rates - resulting from a rise in women's minimum retirement age - is almost half as large as the direct effect upon the women themselves.