Ž . Journal of Health Economics 19 2000 529–539 www.elsevier.nlrlocatereconbase Health insurance and retirement behavior: evidence from the health and retirement survey Jeannette Rogowski ) , Lynn Karoly Senior Economist, RAND, 1333 H Street, N.W., Suite 800, Washington, DC 20005, USA Received 30 December 1999; accepted 28 January 2000 Abstract This paper studies the role of health insurance in the retirement decisions of older workers. As policymakers consider mechanisms for how to increase access to affordable health insurance for the near elderly, considerations of the potential labor force implications of such policies will be important to consider — potentially inducing retirements just at a time when the labor force is shrinking. Using data from the 1992 and 1996 waves of the Health and Retirement Survey, this study demonstrates that access to post-retirement health insurance has a large effect on retirement. Among older male workers, those with retiree Ž health benefit offers are 68% more likely to retire and those with non-employment based . insurance are 44% more likely to retire than their counterparts who would lose employ- ment-based health insurance upon retirement. In addition, the study demonstrated that in retirement models, when retiree health benefits are controlled for, the effects of pension coverage are reduced, suggesting that these effects may have been overestimated in the prior literature. q 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Health insurance; Retirement; Elderly 1. Introduction With the aging of the baby boom generation, the number of near elderly Americans will rise dramatically in coming years. By 2020, it is estimated that ) Corresponding author. Tel.: q 1-202-296-5000 ext. 5356; fax: q 1-202-296-7960. Ž . E-mail address: jar@rand.org J. Rogowski . 0167-6296r00r$ - see front matter q 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Ž . PII: S0167-6296 00 00038-2