March 2023
24Mar

Retirement preparedness during uncertain times

By Fidelity 2023 RSA Executive Summary Fidelity’s Retirement Savings Assessment is built upon comprehensive data from more than 3,500 survey responses that are run through the extensive retirement planning platform Fidelity uses every day with customers. The result: a numerical indicator showing whether savers are on track to meet estimated retirement income needs. The score places households into four categories on the preparedness spectrum, based on a household’s ability to cover estimated retirement expenses in a down market. Read book here

March 24, 2023
Books, Books, Savings, , , ,
Read more...
10Mar

The Influence of Financial Literacy on Retirement Planning in South Africa

By Nyasha Tapiwa Dhlembeu, Mamekwa Katlego Kekana & Mpinda Freddy Mvita Background: A shift in the retirement planning and pensions landscape has created an enormous responsibility for individuals to plan for their retirement provision actively. Very few South Africans reach the average retirement age of 65 years with sufficient funds to sustain themselves during their retirement. Purpose/objective: Using secondary data from the 2011 South African Social Attitudes Survey (SASAS), this study aims to examine the influence financial literacy has on the...

March 10, 2023
Articles, Savings, , , , ,
Read more...

February 2023
08Feb

Pension Withdrawals Drain Savings in Chile and Peru

By Richard Francis, Kelli Bissett-Tom & Christopher Dychala Peru, Chile and Bolivia have allowed early withdrawals from their funds as a source of relief for households and to support recoveries during the pandemic and the global price shock. But these have had negative financial and confidence ramifications, contributing to downgrades of Peru in 2021 and Chile in 2020. Longstanding private pension funds have been important supports for sovereign creditworthiness where they exist in Latin America. Pension fund assets have supported sovereign...

February 8, 2023
Books, Books, Regulation, Savings, , , , , ,
Read more...
08Feb

Early Pension Withdrawals in Chile During the Pandemic

By Olga Fuentes, Olivia S. Mitchell & Félix Villatoro Chile, with one of the largest and best funded defined contribution programs in Latin America, held over USD $200 bn in assets at the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, or more than 80% of GDP. Reacting to populist pressures during the pandemic, however, the government gave non-retired participants three separate opportunities to tap into their retirement accounts, leaving some 4.2 million participants with zero retirement savings and draining around $50 bn...

February 8, 2023
Articles, Operation, Pension design, Savings, , , , ,
Read more...

January 2023
24Jan

Financial regret at older ages and longevity awareness

By Abigail Hurwitz & Olivia S. Mitchell Older people often express regret about financial decisions made earlier in life that left them susceptible to old-age insecurity. Prior work has explored one outcome, saving regret, or peoples’ expressed wish that they had saved more earlier in life. The present paper extends attention to five additional areas regarding financial decisions, examining whether older Americans also regret not having insured better, claimed benefits and quit working too early, and becoming financially dependent on...

January 24, 2023
Articles, Savings, , ,
Read more...
13Jan

The Effect of Required Minimum Distributions on Intergenerational Transfers

By: Jonathan M. Leganza How do households use retirement savings accounts in retirement? The answer to this question is important for tax policy pertaining to retirement savings. I shed light on this question by studying how households respond to Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) regulations, which mandate withdrawals from retirement accounts upon reaching a specified age. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study and a regression discontinuity design, I estimate the causal effects of aging into RMD regulations. First, I...

January 13, 2023
Articles, Savings, ,
Read more...

December 2022

Spending Trajectories after Age 65: Variation by Initial Wealth
20Dec

Spending Trajectories after Age 65: Variation by Initial Wealth

By: M Hurd & Susann Rohwedder   There has been extensive research on the importance of saving for retirement and on tools to support the accumulation of retirement wealth. Much less attention has been paid to the decumulation phase, that is, the spending down of wealth following retirement. Understanding the decumulation phase requires information about the spending patterns of older households and how those patterns evolve with age. This study uses comprehensive longitudinal data on total household spending from a survey...

December 20, 2022
Articles, Pension design, Savings, ,
Read more...

November 2022
25Nov

Average Retirement Savings: How Do You Compare?

By Amelia Josephson If you’re wondering what’s a normal amount of retirement savings, you’re probably one of the 60% of Americans who either don’t think their savings are on track or aren’t sure, according to the Federal Reserve’s “Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2019.” Among all adults, median retirement savings are $65,000, according to the Federal Reserve’s most recent data. The Federal Reserve also estimated that by retirement, that number would grow to an average...

November 25, 2022
Articles, Savings, , ,
Read more...
03Nov

Risk Pooling and Precautionary Saving in Village Economies

By Marcel Fafchamps & Aditya Shrinivas We propose a new method to test for efficient risk pooling that allows for intertemporal smoothing, non-homothetic consumption, and heterogeneous risk and time preferences. The method is composed of three steps. The first one allows for precautionary savings by the aggregate risk pooling group. The second utilizes the inverse Engel curve to estimate good-specific tests for efficient risk pooling. In the third step, we obtain consistent estimates of households' risk and time preferences using...

November 3, 2022
Articles, Savings, , ,
Read more...

October 2022
28Oct

Optimal Savings and Portfolio Choice with Risky Labor Income and Reference-Dependent Preferences 

By Servaas van Bilsen, Roger J. A. Laeven & Theo Nijman This paper explores the joint impact of reference-dependent preferences and non- tradable risky labor income on optimal savings and portfolio decisions. We develop a non-trivial solution procedure to determine the optimal policies. Our results reveal that the impact of permanent labor income shocks on both the optimal savings rate and the optimal portfolio share is more pronounced under reference- dependent preferences than under CRRA preferences. In particular, we find...

October 28, 2022
Articles, Investing, Savings, , ,
Read more...