Page 9 - IDEA Studie 6 2015 Vek odchodu do duchodu

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
 The aim of this analysis is to identify risks and possible obstacles associated with faster growth of the statutory and effective retirement age in the Czech Republic. The study provides the first and very detailed quantitative insight on the phenomena of retirement and old-age-related departures from the labour market in the Czech Republic. For this purpose, we employ unique, internationally comparable data from the SHARE survey.
 Our analysis reveals that older generations in the Czech Republic still exhibit some differences from more developed countries in Western and Northern Europe. Socio-economic conditions, educational attainment, occupational structure, or health status are still lower due to reasons related to historical development in the 20th century. On the other hand, improvements and convergence of aforementioned characteristics to more economically developed countries of the EU during a relatively short period of time has been notable.
 Our findings provide little support for the opinion that early effective retirement in the Czech Republic can be attributed to inferior personal and socio-economic conditions of its older population. Instead, our analysis indicates that early retirement and departure from the labour market are driven by institutions and incentives induced by the tax, welfare, and pension system and most likely also by employment policies that affect both workers and employers and form their expectations.
 The prevailing lower incidence of employment of older Czech men and women compared to more developed EU countries can be only very partially attributed to differences in personal characteristics. We document that health conditions of individuals deteriorate much slowly than the age profile at which people retire and leave labour market. We find an impact of the incidence of unemployment for women but not for men. Finally, retirement and employment age profiles are significantly affected by statutory early retirement conditions.
 Our analysis does not identify any major risks from further postponement of the retirement age from its current level. Our simulations show that would the Czech population with its demographic, health, and socio-economic characteristics be subjected to the Swedish institutional system, the whole employment gap for men and around 80% of the gap for women disappears. While the efficiency and social gains from eliminating such underused human capacity are not directly observable, they are enormous as well as essential for the sustainability of the a welfare state in the Czech Republic.
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