Pension insecurity and well-being in Europe

This paper studies pension insecurity in a sample of non-retired individuals aged 50 years or older from 18 European countries. We relate pension insecurity with the subjective expectations on the probability that the government will reduce the pensions of the individual before retirement or will increase the statutory retirement age. We argue that changes in economic conditions and policy affect the formation of such probabilities, and through this, subjective wellbeing. In particular, we study the effects of pension insecurity on subjective wellbeing with pooled OLS models, regressions per quintiles and instrumental variables. We find a statistically significant, stable and negative association between pension insecurity and subjective wellbeing. The quintile regressions allow us to establish that pension insecurity is more salient for individuals who are poorer, who subjectively assess their life survival rate as low and who have higher cognitive abilities.