It is argued occupational pension contributions that increase with age disadvantage older workers by extending unemployment durations and disadvantage younger workers by reducing relative compensation. Studies applying a causal inference design have so far examined taxes on older workers, rather than pension contributions. In this paper we use a national reform, which reduced occupational pension contributions for women in Switzerland, looking at how a change in pension contributions impacted unemployment duration and reemployment wages. With three three-year age groups experiencing reductions, we estimate heterogeneous effects by age. Results suggest a change in occupational pension contributions in line with recent policy proposals has no impact on unemployment durations or reemployment income.
Hevenstone et al. (Fri,) studied this question.