| Test Your Human Resources Knowledge | ||
|
| Labor Law Journal Submissions | ||
|
| Labor Arbitrators' Awards and Biographies | ||
5500 Preparer's Manual for 2012 Plan Years
The premier resource in the field of Form 5500 preparation, 5500 Preparer's Manual will help you handle the required annual Form 5500 filings for both pension benefits and welfare benefit plans.
From Spencer's Benefits Reports: Older workers without access to health insurance after retirement will postpone retirement, even though health improves somewhat after retirement, two separate studies from the University of Michigan Retirement Research Center suggest. In The Effects of Health Insurance and Self-Insurance on Retirement Behavior (Working Paper 2007-170), economists Eric French from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and John Bailey Jones from the State University of New York at Albany found that delaying Medicare eligibility from age 65 to age 67 would cause workers ages 60 to 67 to delay retirement significantly by an average of 0.9 percentage points per year. This impact is similar to that caused by the shift in the Social Security retirement age from age 65 to age 67.
The researchers’ retirement model predicts that workers whose health insurance is tied to their job leave the labor force about 0.41 years later than workers with employer-provided retiree medical coverage.
Furthermore, Mr.. French and Mr. Jones also evaluated how much individuals value health insurance and found that approximately one-third of the attributed value comes from the reduction in average medical expenses, with the remaining two-thirds arising from reduction in medical expense uncertainty. If workers did not have enough savings to pay for uninsured medical expenses, they would value health insurance even more. “We find that workers value health insurance well in excess of its actuarial cost, and that access to health insurance has a significant effect on retirement behavior, which is consistent with the empirical evidence,” they concluded.
In addition, workers electing or being forced to postpone retirement beyond age 65 might miss out on some of the positive health effects of retirement, economists John Bound from the University of Michigan and Timothy Waidmann from the Urban Institute suggest in Estimating the Health Effects of Retirement (Working Paper 2007-168). “We find no evidence of negative health effects of retirement and some evidence that there may be a positive effect, at least for men,” the economists wrote. “One possible source of improvements in health is that not working may promote better health-related behavior. In retirement, men were about 5% more likely and women 10% more likely to engage in ‘sports or physical activities that are moderately energetic’ at least once a week.”
This study also found a 14% reduction in men’s annual mortality from circulatory causes between the ages of 65 and 74. “Our estimates would seem to suggest that delaying retirement would tend to postpone the positive health effects of retirement. However, this does not mean that recent shifts that have been introduced to encourage the delay in retirement are a mistake. By the same token, our results suggest that policies based on the paternalistic notion that work is good for individuals is mistaken.”
For more information, visit http://www.mrrc.isr.umich.edu/.
For more information on this and related topics, consult the CCH Pension Plan Guide, CCH Employee Benefits Management, and Spencer's Benefits Reports.
Visit our News Library to read more news stories.
©2005-2024 CCH Incorporated or its affiliates
