Abstract
Health is one of major factors that cause people to retire. However, referring to the gender gap in pensions, empirical studies mostly focus on the influence of working years, occupation and education on the gap, instead of gendered health disparity. This study aims to understand how the effect of health on the timing of receiving retirement benefits are conditioned by gender, cohort and the institution.
This study will use the 1992–1998 and 2004–2014 waves of Health and Retirement Study (HRS) data and the 1989–1999 and 1996–2011 waves of the Taiwan Longitudinal Study in Aging (TLSA) to examine the effects of gender disparity in late adulthood health on the timing of SSB and pension receipts. Discrete-time event history analysis by logistic regression models are adopted to investigate the hazard rate of receiving retirement benefits across individuals and cohorts.
Based on cumulative disadvantage or advantage approach in life course perspective, this study suggests the mechanisms “work incapacity”, “wage depressing”, “the limitation of job opportunity” and “anticipation of shorter life expectancy” could lead gender and cohorts to have dissimilar patterns of retirement income receipt timing. Additionally, the social policies and the institutions such as cash benefits and health insurance system could be pathways to change the opportunities structure and incentive structure in the timing of retirement benefit receipt. This study not only enriches life course perspective but also provides the implication of the policy “delaying retirement ages for full SSB” for the U.S. and the East Asia countries like Taiwan.