Women's wish for more free time with their husbands is a big motivator to retire at the same time as their husbands, a researcher says. (Photo: Shutterstock)
A Norwegian study has found that women whose husbands take early retirement are more likely also to retire early. But the reverse isn't the case—and this isn't the first study to come to that conclusion.
According to ScienceNordic.com, the study, from PhD fellow Herman Kruse in the Department of Economics at the University of Oslo, examined the choices of female and male Norwegian 63-year-olds when their spouses retired.
“When husbands chose to take advantage of the Norwegian early retirement scheme, their wives were 21.5 percentage points more likely to also retire,” Kruse is quoted saying in the report, adding, “This is a strong effect.”
And when the wife retired early? Meh. Kruse continues, “But when the woman in a couple chose to retire early, we found no indication that men were influenced by the woman's choice.”
Lest one come to the conclusion that it's a peculiarity of 63-year-olds, Kruse also had a look at 64-year-olds to see what they would do in that scenario. He found an even stronger effect of 23.2 percentage points for the women.
When a spouse retires, the other spouse has three basic choices: work less (or retire), work the same amount or work even more. And if the spouses are pretty much on a par with each other in earning power? Kruse said in the report, “In addition, I found that the more similar the spouses' earning power, education and choice of workplace was, the more likely it was that women would choose to retire when their husband did.”
Kruse believes that this supports the assumption that women's wish for more free time with their husbands is a big motivator to retire at the same time as their husbands.
Norway revamped its pension system in 2011 to give older adults motivation to keep working longer, and while researchers have found that it was effective in doing so, with both women and men working more since the changes took effect, that doesn't mean that it's equally effective on both sexes.
In fact, while incentives work to keep men in the workforce past age 62 and their spouses also tend to work longer, the reverse isn't happening.
While women may work past age 62, the men in their lives don't. Kruse pointed out in the report that “If we only look at individuals as individuals and not as couples, then we risk underestimating the impact of the incentives being implemented to encourage people in their 60s to work more.”
Interestingly, earlier studies have identified the same phenomenon, with a 2016 study from Switzerland also finding that men influence women, but not the reverse; in addition, a French study of thousands of married couples has shown the same results.
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Marlene Satter
Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.
