February 2025
14Feb

The effect of Covid pension withdrawals and the Universal Guaranteed Pension on the income of future retirees in Chile

By Carlos Madeira Chile implemented large pension withdrawals during the Covid pandemic. Afterwards, Chile increased non contributory beneÖts in a quasi-universal scheme. Simulating future pensions, I show that the average loss in contributory pension income is 27.9%, with losses of 23.9% and 31.4% for men and women, respectively. After accounting for public transfers, the average loss in total pension income is just 6.2%, with losses of 7.5% and 5.2% for men and women, respectively. Current retirees lost just 1.1% of...

February 14, 2025
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07Feb

Smaller than We Thought? The Effect of Automatic Savings Policies

By James J. Choi, David Laibson, Jordan Cammarota, Richard Lombardo & John Beshears Medium- and long-run dynamics undermine the effect of automatic enrollment and default savings-rate auto-escalation on retirement savings. Our analysis of nine 401(k) plans incorporates the facts that employees frequently leave firms (often before matching contributions from their employer have fully vested), a large percentage of 401(k) balances are withdrawn upon employment separation, and many employees opt out of auto-escalation. Steady-state saving rates increase by 0.6% of income due to automatic enrollment and...

February 7, 2025
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January 2025
31Jan

Household Saving in Japan: The Past, Present, and Future

By Charles Yuji Horioka This paper explores the determinants of the level of, and trends over time in, Japan’s household saving rate, with emphasis on the impact of the age structure of the population, and makes projections about future trends therein. The paper finds that Japan’s household saving rate has not always been high either absolutely or relative to other countries and that it was only during the 1961-86 period that it exceeded 15%. Past and future trends in Japan’s...

January 31, 2025
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24Jan

Influencing Retirement Savings Decisions with Automatic Enrollment and Related Tools

By John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian Historically, retirees in the US relied on the “three-legged stool” of Social Security, defined benefit (DB) pension plans, and personal savings to provide retirement income.1 Beginning in the late 1970s, however, access to DB plans began to fall while access to defined contribution (DC) plans, which require individuals to make their own savings plan contributions and investment decisions during their working years, rose.2 As of December 2023, retirement assets in...

January 24, 2025
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December 2024
06Dec

Household Saving in Japan: The Past, Present, and Future

By Charles Yuji Horioka This paper explores the determinants of the level of, and trends over time in, Japan’s household saving rate, with emphasis on the impact of the age structure of the population, and makes projections about future trends therein. The paper finds that Japan’s household saving rate has not always been high either absolutely or relative to other countries and that it was only during the 1961-86 period that it exceeded 15%. Past and future trends in Japan’s...

December 6, 2024
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October 2024
11Oct

Patterns of Consumption and Savings around Retirement

By Arna Olafsson & Michaela Pagel This chapter analyzes how consumption, savings, and other positions on household balance sheets change around retirement. Four patterns stand out. First, many households have barely any savings and hold substantial amounts of consumer debt at the time of retirement. Second, consumption falls at retirement, possibly due to work-related expenses, bargain shopping, or because households face unexpected adverse shocks. Third, liquid savings increase at retirement. Fourth, wealth increases more over the course of retirement for...

October 11, 2024
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04Oct

Savings Goals Matter – Cognitive Constraints, Retirement Planning, and Downstream Economic Behaviors

By Zihan Ye, Thomas Post, Xiaopeng Zou & Shenglan Chen We study how cognitive constraints relate to each distinct step of the planning and execution process for retirement, that is, individuals’ propensity to plan, savings goals set, and economic outcomes (wealth accumulation and portfolio choice). We find that different cognitive constraints play distinct roles: Higher advanced financial literacy (and quantitative reasoning ability) predicts a greater propensity to plan, while higher basic financial literacy and verbal cognition predict setting higher savings...

October 4, 2024
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July 2024
05Jul

2023 Defined Contribution Pension and Savings Report

By Gemma Burrows The 2023 survey contains data on 122 of the FTSE 350 companies and 140 other leading UK employers, which makes this one of the largest UK DC Pension and Savings Surveys in the industry. As always, we would like to thank those who took part in this survey and helped us to conduct this research and bring these valuable insights. Get the report here ___ Since our last survey, we have seen turmoil in investment markets, inflation rise into double-digit...

July 5, 2024
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April 2024
19Apr

Strength in Diversity: What We Can Learn from BC’s Target-benefit Plans

By Barry Gros With the significant decline in single-employer defined-benefit (DB) pension plans in the private sector, it’s important to understand other alternatives. One such alternative is the target-benefit plan. The regulation of target-benefit plans (TBPs) in all provinces across Canada can be made more straightforward and effective using lessons learned from real-life experiences. With target-benefit plans currently being more prominent in the province of British Columbia than any other province, it is useful to take a closer look at these...

April 19, 2024
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March 2024
27Mar

Autonomy or Delegation, Libertarianism or Paternalism: What I Like for Myself and What I Like for Others on Pension Savings

By Carmen Sainz Villalba By using an online survey conducted with Bilendi&Respondi, we correlate the variables of people’s perception of howdifferent they are from others with respect to their pension plan preferences, how informed they are about financial matters in general, and what are their preferences toward the government intervention of savings plans. The empirical approach is inspired by theory results of Konrad (2023). His game-theory analysis suggest that two factors increase the citizen’s desire for autonomous economic decision-making: eccentricity...

March 27, 2024
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