October 2021
07Oct

Temporal Reframing of Recurring Savings Reduces Perceived Pain and Helps Those with Lower Financial Literacy to Save

By Stephen Shu Steve Thomas & David A. Smith While assessments of the Gig Economy vary in terms of size, growth, and heterogeneity, most studies suggest that this segment of the economy is sizeable, growing, and diverse in terms of types of work. Some concerns in the literature include both the present and future welfare of workers in the Gig Economy. More granular, temporal reframing of savings (e.g., save $5 a day versus $150 a month) has been shown to...

October 7, 2021
Articles, Pension design, Savings, , ,
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September 2021
30Sep

Do Tax Deferred Accounts Improve Lifecycle Savings? Experimental Evidence

By John Duffy, Yue Li Tax deferred accounts (TDAs) are an increasingly popular method of saving for retirement, and have become common across many developed countries. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether TDAs actually improve a household's lifecycle savings behavior and retirement preparedness because it is difficult to perform a counterfactual analysis. Households always have other means of savings so there is no guarantee that a TDA, with its inflexible restriction that funds cannot be drawn until retirement, will be attractive...

September 30, 2021
Articles, Pension design, Savings, ,
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August 2021
12Aug

Using Fresh Starts to Nudge Increased Retirement Savings

By John Beshears, Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman & Shlomo benartzi We conducted a field experiment to study the effect of framing future moments in time as new beginnings (or “fresh starts”). University employees (N=6,082) received mailings with an opportunity to choose between increasing their contributions to a savings plan immediately or at a specified future time point. Framing the future time point in relation to a fresh start date (e.g., the recipient’s birthday, the first day of spring) increased...

August 12, 2021
Articles, Pension design, Savings,
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12Aug

Living in the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Health, Finances, and Retirement Prospects of Four Generations

By Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies Since 1998, Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies® (TCRS) has conducted a national survey of U.S. business employers and workers regarding their attitudes toward retirement. The overall goals for the study are to illuminate emerging trends, promote awareness, and help educate the public. It has grown to be one of the longest running and largest national surveys of its kind. • Limited Print and Electronic Rights. This document and trademark(s) contained herein are federally registered or...

August 12, 2021
Books, Reports, Savings, , , ,
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July 2021
23Jul

The Fintech Gender Gap

By Sharon Chen, Sebastian Doerr, Jon Frost, Leonardo Gambacorta & Hyun Song Shin Fintech promises to spur financial inclusion and close the gender gap in access to financial services. Using novel survey data for 28 countries, this paper finds a large 'fintech gender gap': while 29% of men use fintech products and services, only 21% of women do. The gap is present in almost every country in our sample. Country characteristics and several individual-level controls explain about a third of...

July 23, 2021
Articles, Innovation, Labor Market, Savings, , ,
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08Jul

The Role of Emergency Savings in Family Financial Security Barriers to Saving and Policy Opportunities

By The PEW Charitable Trust The first two briefs in this research series on emergency savings detailed responses to The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Survey of American Family Finances, a nationally representative survey of 7,845 households, and demonstrated that many households are at risk of financial shocks, that these shocks often disrupt and derail their finances, and that the savings most have on hand are probably insufficient for the challenges they might face. Pew’s research also has highlighted that although Americans believe robust emergency reserves...

July 8, 2021
Books, Savings,
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02Jul

Pension Incentives and Labor Supply: Evidence from the Introduction of Universal Old-Age Assistance in the UK

By Matthias Giesecke, Philipp Jaeger We study the labor supply implications of the Old-Age Pension Act (OPA) of 1908, which, for the first time, provided pensions to older people in the UK. Using recently released census data covering the entire population, we exploit variation at the newly created age-based eligibility threshold. Our results show a considerable and abrupt decline in labor force participation of 6.0 percentage points (13%) when older workers reach the eligibility age of 70. To mitigate the...

July 2, 2021
Articles, Investment, Savings,
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June 2021
17Jun

Do adverse health shock s induce myopic financial planning?

By Jialu L. Streeter Health and financial planning have both been found to be crucial to long-term financial stability. However, the impact of a health shock on financial plan-ning horizon was not directly tested. This article traces the trajectories of the financial planning horizon before and after the occurrence of work-limitinghealth shocks, using longitudinal panel data from the Health and RetirementStudy. Results show that, during the 10 years following a health shock, individ-uals are 20 to 39% more likely to...

June 17, 2021
Articles, Savings, , ,
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May 2021
20May

Scaling Up Sustainable Investment through Blockchain-Based Project Bonds

By Yushi Chen, Ulrich Volz This paper explores options for mobilizing domestic savings through fintech solutions to scale up sustainable investment. Most developing and emerging economies face an urgent need to scale up sustainable finance for low-carbon and climate-resilient infrastructure investment, yet underdeveloped capital markets tend to inhibit domestic resource mobilization for infrastructure investment. At the same time, domestic savers in many developing and emerging economies face a scarcity of “safe” assets in the local currency, resulting in the exporting...

May 20, 2021
Articles, Investing, Savings, , , ,
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06May

Time Horizon, Saving Motive and Stock Market Participation

By Yosef Bonaparte This paper shows that household’s saving motives influence key portfolio choice decision: stock market participation. We utilize a unique data set from the Survey of Consumer Finance (2019 and panel 2007-209), which report about 24 reasons for saving and group these intro 6 saving motive categories: durable, retirement, bequest, emergency, smooth and luxury. Our channel to identify how saving motives influence portfolio choice encompasses the time horizon, from the household’s view, about the planning time horizon to...

May 6, 2021
Articles, Investment, Savings, ,
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