How has the Danish pension reform affected the age of retirement?

In 1998, the Danish Parliament passed an mendment to the Early Retirement Pay scheme (efterlon). The main purpose of the change was to create incentives for older people to stay in the labour force, and thereby to raise the average retirement age. This paper concerns the effects of this recent alteration in the early retirement pay scheme. In particular, the paper examines the impact on the average retirement age for different education and income groups. The evaluation is based on a structural model for retirement which is estimated on the basis of individual panel data. The analyses show that the alteration seems to have raised the retirement age for all education and income groups. However, the size of the effect varies greatly; the largest effects ave found for women, and for the unskilled and people with vocational training.