April 2020

How People React to Pension Risk

By Nicolas Salamanca, Andries de Grip, Olaf Sleijpen We show that people exposed to greater pension risk are less likely to invest in risky assets. We exploit a reform that links people's future pension benefits to their pension funds' funding ratio—a measure of the fund's financial health—making funding ratios a fund-specific measure of pension risk. The effect of pension risk is stronger for people who are better informed about their pensions, for retirees and pension-age non-retirees, and for wealthier...

December 2019

Debt Close to Retirement and Its Implications for Retirement Well-being

By Annamaria Lusardi, Olivia S. Mitchell, Noemi Oggero We analyze debt and debt management of Americans nearing retirement age. We show that older people have numerous financial obligations that can lead to financial distress. Using data from the 2015 National Financial Capability Study and an extensive literature review, we show that lack of financial literacy, lack of information, and behavioral biases help explain the prevalence of debt later in life. Our evidence indicates that debt at older ages can...

November 2019

Behind the Success of Dominated Personal Pension Plans: Sales Force and Financial Literacy Factors

By Giuseppe Marotta (Department of Economics Marco Biagi and CEFIN) The revealed preference for dominated insurance-based personal pension plans in Italy is a decade-long puzzle. I surmise that a motivation from the supply side is a sales force factor deriving from the geographical distribution of financial providers, including the countrywide network of the state controlled Post Office. I provide supporting evidence using three biennial waves of the Bank of Italy’s survey on household finances from 2010 to 2014. The time...

October 2019

UK. Delivering pension dashboards

The inclusion of the pension dashboards among the announcements in the Queen’s Speech on October 14 was an important step forward for this initiative, reflecting support from the government and enabling the industry to move forward to deliver dashboards with renewed vigour and certainty. Read also UK. Retirement income gender gap is the biggest in a decade While it has been pointed out that a lack of government majority in parliament means the proposals contained in the pensions bill might...

Social Security Education a Must-Have for Retirement Plan Participants

General education is helpful, but getting personal will help employees establish a plan for income in retirement. According to the Social Security Administration’s website, Social Security will replace about 40% of an employee’s pre-retirement income after retirement. It explains that this will be lower for people in the upper income brackets and higher for people with low incomes. “You’ll need to supplement your benefits with a pension, savings or investments,” the website says. However, even the Social Security Administration notes...

September 2019

Does Automatic Enrollment Increase Contributions to Supplement Retirement Programs by K-12 and University Employees?

By Robert L. Clark, Denis Pelletier This study examines the impact of the adoption of automatic enrollment provisions by schools and universities in the state of South Dakota for its supplemental retirement saving plan (SRP). In South Dakota, educational personnel are also covered by a defined benefit pension plan and by Social Security. Thus, career public employees in South Dakota can expect a life time annuity from these two programs of around 75 percent of their final salary. Prior...

August 2019

Using Vignettes to Improve Understanding of Social Security and Annuities

By Anya Samek, Arie Kapteyn, Andre Gray Evidence shows that people have difficulty understanding complex aspects of retirement planning, which leads them to under-utilize annuities and claim Social Security benefits earlier than is optimal. To target this problem, we developed vignettes about the consequences of different annuitization and claiming decisions. We evaluated our vignettes using an experiment with a representative online panel of nearly 2,000 Americans. In our experiment, respondents were either assigned to a control group with no...

July 2019

Navigating Complex Financial Decisions at Retirement: Evidence from Annuity Choices in Public Sector Pensions

By Robert L. Clark, Robert G. Hammond, David Vanderweide Choices regarding the disposition of wealth at retirement can have substantial implications for retirement income security. We analyze the factors determining annuity option choices offered by a public sector defined pension plan with no default annuity option. Using combined administrative records and survey data, we explore the role of individual and household characteristics as well as risk preferences, time preferences, and financial literacy. The evidence is consistent with predictions over which...

June 2019

Financial Literacy and Financial Education: Theory and Survey

By Beata Swiecka, Aleksandra Grzesiuk, Dieter Korczak It is a well-known saying that money does not buy happiness. But it certainly helps in life. It is important to have enough of it to satisfy our needs and to secure ourselves from emergency situations. That's what adults think. And what about the youth? What is their approach to money, what do they know about finances and how are their skills in everyday financial management coming along? What kind of...

October 2018

Who Feels the Nudge? Knowledge, Self-Awareness and Retirement Savings Decisions

By Anders Anderson (Swedish House of Finance) & David T. Robinson (Fuqua School of Business, Duke University; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)) Using a financial literacy survey of Swedish pension investors matched to actual retirement savings decisions, we argue that respondents can be broken into three groups: those who are financially literate, those who mistakenly believe they are financially literate, and those who know that they are not. We examine how these groups respond differently to informational nudges encouraging...