Work after retirement in Italy: evidence from merged data survey and administrative records

This paper explores the labour market participation of Italian pensioners between 2004 and 2017, exploiting a novel dataset that combines administrative and survey data. In line with official statistics, about 10% of pensioners in our data also engage in paid employment. We characterise these working pensioners and investigate their motivations for working. We find that 60% of working pensioners are self-employed and that the vast majority (nine out of ten) of these were also self-employed before retiring. We observe a strong persistence in post-retirement self-employment: 84% of former non-professional self-employed stay in work for at least four years after retirement, compared to 46% of private employees. In addition, the characteristics of being male, married, resident in the Centre-North, highly educated, having a partner in work and being in good health are associated with a higher probability of being a working pensioner. Regarding the motivation for working, our regression analysis indicates that financial need plays a limited role. We find weak evidence that the very poorest pensioners exhibit a higher probability of working, and this effect mostly disappears when using panel data to control for unobserved individual characteristics. These results suggest that the decision to continue working is primarily driven by preference rather than financial need.