Increasing the State Pension Age, the Recession and Expected Retirement Ages

In March 2010, the Irish government announced that the age at which the state pension is paid would be raised to 66 in 2014, 67 in 2021 and 68 in 2028. One typical objective of such policy reforms is to provide an incentive for later retirement. The question we address in this paper is whether the expected retirement ages of Irish individuals aged 50 to 64 changed as a result of the policy announcement. The data we use are from the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA). Our findings show that there was no noticeable break in expected retirement ages before and after 3 March, 2010 (the day on which the policy announcement was made). Also during 2010, the economic news became increasingly bad as the full scale of the fiscal and banking crises in Ireland emerged. The data suggest that there was a reduction in the proportion of people planning to retire at age 65 after 30 September, 2010, the day that the full scale of the banking crisis emerged.