Retirement Age and Preretirement in German Administrative Data

Content The present paper investigates individual determinants of retirement entry age using administrative data on individuals’ retirement entries in 2003 published by the German Pension Insurance (SUF Versichertenrentenzugang 2003 ). As preretirement is an important issue in Germany, special interest is attached to the identification of individuals that preretire: 40 percent of all men and women in the sample preretire. On average they stay 2.4 years in preretirement before taking one of the offcial retirement plans. Differences between individual determinants for those choosing preretirement programs as opposed to regular public pension plans are discussed. A reduced form econometric approach is employed in order to explore these questions. Noticeable differences arise with respect to rehabilitation claims before retirement, income before retirement and pension payments. Overall, the paper puts a great emphasis on discussing sample properties, variable definitions, and data limitations of administrative data that are especially useful for follow-up studies.