Volume 37, Number 1 (Winter) 2002
Baker, Michael. 2002. "The Retirement Behavior of Married Couples: Evidence from the Spouse's Allowance." Journal of Human Resources 37(1): 34.
I examine the introduction of the Spouse's Allowance to the Canadian Income Security (IS) system. This program was nominally targeted at females in couples attempting to live on a single pension, allowing them to receive the age related benefits of the IS system at age 60, up to five years earlier than other members of the population. The results indicate that the introduction of the Allowance is associated with a six to seven percentage point relative decrease in labor force participation among males in eligible couples. Eligible females did not share the rising employment rates of their counterparts (of the same age) who were not eligible for the Allowance.
Michael Baker is an associate professor of economics at the University of Toronto. He thanks Susanna Loeb. Marianne Page. and Aloysius Siow for helpful discussions. and Tom Crossley and participants at the 1998 C1LN Conference. the Canadian Department of Finance and the University of Michigan for comments. Much of this paper was completed while the author was visiting the Australian National University. He is grateful to the Economics Program, RSSS. for their hospitality. Research funding was provided by SSHRC (Grants #410-96-0187 and #410-99-0112). The data used in this article can be obtained beginning May 2002 through April 2005 from Michael Baker. Department of Economics. University of Toronto, 150 St. George St., Toronto ON, CANADA. M5S 3G7.
© 2003 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
US ISSN 0022-166X