Kevin D. Neuman
University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point
Abstract
Retirement age is often used as a proxy for retirement leisure, but if retirement is correlated with mortality this may be misleading. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study and an ordered SUR Tobit model, we analyze the determinants of retirement and death age to see who consumes retirement leisure. We find that men, Hispanics, white collar workers, people in good health, and workers with defined contribution pensions or high defined benefit accruals consume less retirement leisure. We also find a variety of factors that significantly influence retirement independently but do not affect retirement leisure, resulting in misleading predictions.
