Labor market participation and postponed retirement in central and eastern Europe

Abstract

This paper shows that as the educational composition in the 55–64-year-old age bracket improved between the mid-1990s and the mid-2010s, the effective retirement age rose rapidly in the Central and Eastern European region. This increase was fast enough to keep life expectancies at the effective retirement age practically unchanged. In effect, the labor market absorbed all improvements in life expectancies in older working ages. The paper also shows that maintaining the current life expectancies at retirement over the next 30 years requires less effort in terms of further raising the effective retirement age than what the region achieved in this respect in the last 15 years.