Household Consumption at Retirement: A Regression Discontinuity Study on French Data

36 Pages Posted: 2 Nov 2013

See all articles by Nicolas Moreau

Nicolas Moreau

University of Toulouse I - GREMAQ & LIRHE; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Elena Stancanelli

Paris School of Economics (PSE)

Abstract

Earlier literature has investigated the drop in household consumption upon retirement of the head of the household, the so-called "retirement consumption puzzle". Here, we expand on these studies by considering also retirement of the wife, thus distinguishing households in which the wife is a "housewife" from 'dual-earners'. We use a regression discontinuity approach to estimate the effect of each partner's retirement on household consumption. We use for the analysis data drawn from the French Consumer Budget Survey 2001 that collected two-week expenditure diaries. We find a significant and sizable drop in food and clothes expenditure upon retirement of the male partner. However, the drop in food expenditure is not robust to specification checks and it becomes statistically insignificant when dropping from the sample couples in which the wife is a housewife.

Keywords: consumption, ageing, retirement, regression discontinuity

JEL Classification: D12, J22, J14, C1

Suggested Citation

Moreau, Nicolas and Stancanelli, Elena, Household Consumption at Retirement: A Regression Discontinuity Study on French Data. IZA Discussion Paper No. 7709, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2349032 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2349032

Nicolas Moreau (Contact Author)

University of Toulouse I - GREMAQ & LIRHE ( email )

Manufacture des Tabacs
21 Allees de Brienne
Toulouse, 31000
France

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 7 / 9
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Elena Stancanelli

Paris School of Economics (PSE) ( email )

48 Boulevard Jourdan
Paris, 75014 75014
France

HOME PAGE: http://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/fr/stancanelli-elena/

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