[Work disability as a form of early retirement]

This article explores to what extent a disability-insurance-law for employees in the Netherlands (the WAO) functions as an early-retirement-program. It is shown that there are strong positive correlations between age and the chance to quality for disability-benefits on the one hand and age and the duration of the disability on the other hand. This results in reduced participation-rates among older age-groups in the laborforce. This is one of the reasons why the pensionable age fixed by law at sixty-five does not lead to a clear-cut rift in these participation-rates at this pensionable age.