TY  - JOUR
AU  - Fitzpatrick, Maria D
TI  - Retiree Health Insurance for Public School Employees: Does it Affect Retirement?
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 19524
PY  - 2013
Y2  - October 2013
DO  - 10.3386/w19524
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19524
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w19524.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Maria D. Fitzpatrick
Department of Policy and Management
Cornell University
103 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
Tel: 607/255-1272
Fax: 607/255-4071
E-Mail: maria.d.fitzpatrick@cornell.edu
M1  - published as Maria D. Fitzpatrick. "Retiree Health Insurance for Public School Employees: Does It Affect Retirement?," in Robert Clark and Joseph Newhouse, organizers, "State and Local Health Plans for Active and Retired Public Employees" Journal of Health Economics, Volume 38 (2014)

M3  - presented at "State and Local Health Plans Conference", August 16-17, 2013
AB  - Despite the widespread provision of retiree health insurance for public sector workers, little attention has been paid to its effects on employee retirement.  This is in contrast to the large literature on health-insurance-induced "job-lock" in the private sector.  I use the introduction of retiree health insurance for public school employees in combination with administrative data on their retirement to identify the effects of retiree health insurance.  As expected, the availability of retiree health insurance for older workers allows employees to retire earlier. These behavioral changes have budgetary implications, likely making the programs self-financing rather than costly to taxpayers.
ER  -