The causal influence of increasing the statutory retirement age on job satisfaction among older workers in the Netherlands

Abstract

Since 2013, the Netherlands has gradually increased the statutory retirement age. We use a regression discontinuity design to analyse the effect of the increase in retirement age on overall job satisfaction and satisfaction with the organisation’s personnel policy. Date of birth was used as a sharp cut-off to assign workers to the intervention or comparison group. The increase had no effect on overall job satisfaction. An effect was only observed for satisfaction with the personnel policy in one of the groups analysed. Further, there was only a significant effect if the statutory retirement age was increased by seven months, but this relation was no longer significant when controlling for the difference in days between the date of birth and the cut-off.