The effects of pension rights and retirement age on training participation: Evidence from a natural experiment

This paper uses a natural experiment approach to identify the effects of an exogenous change in future pension benefits on workers’ training participation. We use unique matched survey and administrative data for male employees in the public sector in the Netherlands who were subject to a major pension reform in 2006. We compare training participation of workers who were born in 1949 and remain entitled to generous pension rights under the old system to those who were born in 1950 and are subject to a new less generous system. We find that the exogenous shock in pension rights postpones expected retirement and has a small but positive effect on training participation of older workers.