[Social dependence of early retirement statistics]

In the current discussion of health care policy, the trend in early retirement figures is frequently taken as an indicator of the efficiency of the health care services in our country, or of the disease promoting factors at the workplace. The present study shows that no such direct monitoring of these two problem complexes by reference to the early retirement figures is possible. On the contrary, the high degree of dependence of these figures on social factors is demonstrated. The development of early retirement figures substantially depends on supreme court legislation, job market situation and exceptional demographic alterations. These and others reservations make the invalidity figures basically unsuitable for tracing developments in health care policy.