THE PROXIMITY OF THE RETIREMENT AGE: WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS ON THE ACCUMULATION OF HUMAN CAPITAL AND ON THE JOB SEARCH?

Beyond its negative impact on the employment rate of elder workers, we show in this paper that a short distance to the retirement age explains also the low investment in training. This supports the policies enlarging the retirement age: an increase of the incentive to delay the retirement age not only leads to an raise of the employment rate of elderly but also to promote a better training, upgrading of labor enhances the gains of working. An original equilibrium search model with both endogenous retirement and human capital investment choices gives the theoretical foundation whereas an estimation based an French labor survey provides some empirical support to our approach.