Looking Back in Anger? Retirement and Unemployment Scarring
(joint with A. Knabe und R. Schöb)
Unemployment leaves scars since it lowers workers' life satisfaction even when they are reemployed. Using German panel data, we test whether unemployment experience prior to retirement lowers well-being in retirement. Although retired people report the less life satisfaction the more unemployment they experienced, we cannot attribute this difference to unemployment. A final unemployment spell does not lower life satisfaction after retirement below the level during employment before. Actually, people are the more satisfied after retirement compared to employment periods the more unemployment they experienced in their lives. Our findings indicate that scars of unemployment are limited to working life and that retirement helps people to overcome issues coinciding with unemployment experience.