Umeå Economic Studies,
Umeå University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Several studies have suggested that education is associated with later retirement from the labour market. In this paper, we examine whether adult education, involving enrolees aged 42 or above, delays retirement to potentially increase labour force participation among the elderly. With Swedish register data of transcripts from adult education and an-nual earnings, which encompasses 1979-2004 and 1982-2004 respectively, we exploit the fact that adult education is a large-scale phenomenon in Sweden and construct a measure of the timing of the transition from being self-supported by productive work to being supported by pension transfers. We match samples of treated and controls on the propen-sity score and use non-parametric estimation of survival rates. The results indicate that adult education has no effect on the timing of the retirement from the labour force. This can be contrasted with the fact that adult education is one of the cornerstones of the OECD strategy for “active ageing” and the European Union’s “Lisbon strategy” for growth and jobs.

Keywords: Human capital; Pensions; Elderly; Adult schooling

JEL-codes: H52; H55; H75; I28; J14; J26

18 pages, November 11, 2008

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