TY  - JOUR
AU  - Laun, Lisa
AU  - Palme, Mårten
TI  - The Recent Rise of Labor Force Participation of Older Workers in Sweden
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 24593
PY  - 2018
Y2  - May 2018
DO  - 10.3386/w24593
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w24593
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w24593.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Lisa Laun
Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market
and Education Policy (IFAU)
Box 513
SE-751 20 Uppsala
Sweden
Tel: +46 (0)18 471 60 56
Fax: +46 (0)18 471 70 71
E-Mail: Lisa.Laun@ifau.uu.se

Mårten Palme
Department of Economics
Stockholm University
SE-106 91 Stockholm
SWEDEN
E-Mail: Marten.Palme@ne.su.se
M1  - published as Lisa Laun, Mårten Palme. "The Recent Rise of Labor Force Participation of Older Workers in Sweden," in Courtney C. Coile, Kevin Milligan, and David A. Wise, editors, "Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: Working Longer" University of Chicago Press (2019)

M3  - presented at "International Social Security Project (Working Longer)", May 1, 2018
AB  - This paper studies the background to the increase in labor force participation of older workers in Sweden since 2000. In the first part, we study how the characteristics of the elderly have changed with respect to health, education level and work environment, as well as the impact of joint decision-making within the household. In the second part, we study the importance of institutional changes, including a major reform of the old-age pension system, introduction of tax credits for older workers, changes of the mandatory retirement age and stricter eligibility criteria in the disability insurance program. We find that the rise in labor force participation has coincided with improvements in health and educational attainment across birth cohorts as well as increased screening stringency in the disability insurance program.
ER  -