The preference for retirement: tests for measuring a complex parameter.

Summary This thesis aims to enrich the economic approach to retirement behavior, so that it is better able to understand and predict the effects of retirement policies. To this end, we propose an empirical framework for the analysis of individual preferences for retirement that allows us to clarify the role of its three main determinants: health status, working conditions and pension rights. The identification of preferences for retirement is made possible but also necessary by pension reforms, notably in France, which reinforce the incentives to raise the effective retirement age. In order to be as close as possible to the real preferences of individuals, we proceed in two stages. First, we adopt an inductive approach to study the mechanisms by which working conditions, health and pension rights influence the preference for retirement. These mechanisms are not well known, mainly because of the difficulties in observing the precise conditions under which retirement decisions are made. We show that one way to overcome these difficulties is to mobilize survey data, mixing subjective assessments and information from objective sources. Our results show that potentially pathogenic working conditions, professional wear and tear caused by a deteriorated state of health and a low level of knowledge of retirement rights concern a significant proportion of older workers. Secondly, we propose a synthetic approach to the preference for retirement, by evaluating its economic value, which we define as the price of giving up the right to retire at a given age. To do so, we start from two experimental settings that allow its identification. We show not only that this price is high, but also that it varies significantly with the profile of the individuals.