February 2026

Multidisciplinary Pathways to Retirement Financial Literacy: An Experimental Comparison of Gamified and Infographic Interventions

By Chrizaan Grobbelaar & Liezel Alsemgeest Due to population ageing and a decline in the working-age population, retirees can no longer rely on government support in retirement, making financial literacy even more important for society to plan for retirement. The current low financial literacy levels globally are evident in the vast number of retirees retiring unprepared. Educating a society on the basics of financial literacy is not enough for them to make sense of pension rules, tax implications, or make...

October 2025

Behavioral Biases of Financial Planners: The Case of Retirement Funding Recommendations

By Vishaal Baulkaran & Pawan Jain We examine whether financial planners display common behavioral biases and whether these biases affect their recommendations for various home equity release options to fund retirement income. First, we show that different factors explain different behavioral biases. Second, we show that different behavioral biases affect financial planners’ comfort level and recommendations for various options to fund extra income during retirement. For instance, female planners, planners with advanced degrees and those from non-bank institutions display less...

What could effective pensions engagement look like?

By Pensions Policy Institute This report is primarily focused on the Defined Contribution (DC) landscape, in which engagement and active choice play a greater role, in comparison to Defined Benefit (DB). DC provides an increasing proportion of UK pension provision, with private sector DB provision in decline. As a result, DC savers will make up the majority of future retirees, and even among those with DB entitlement, many will also have some DC savings as a result of increased job...

Research and analysis. Lessons on pensions engagement

By Department for Work & Pensions This report summarises research exploring consumer engagement and ways to increase public engagement with private pensions in the UK. It brings together findings from a rapid review of publicly available literature with intelligence from 6 expert interviews across the UK, Western Europe and Israel. This provides new insight and understanding into some of the factors influencing pensions engagement. The research highlights areas for further research and could be expanded in the future by seeking...

August 2025

South Korea:New strategy to encourage young citizens to enrol in national pension system

The South Korean government is promoting a new policy called first-time youth national pension by supporting three months of insurance premiums for youth turning 18 years old when they first enrol in the national pension. According to the ministry of health and welfare the three months of premium payment support will be available to those between 18 to 26 years of age entering the scheme for the first time. The policy will apply to those who turn 18 in 2027....

May 2025

Annual survey on financial incentives for retirement savings. Country profiles 2024

By Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Countries provide financial incentives to encourage individuals to save for retirement in asset-backed pension plans. Financial incentives for retirement savings can take the form of tax incentives, which are indirect subsidies through the tax code, or non-tax incentives, which are direct government payments into pension accounts. This annual survey provides an overview of the tax treatment of retirement savings and covers non-tax incentives to promote retirement savings in OECD countries and four accession...

February 2025

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...

January 2025

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...

November 2024

Pension Policy Preferences: Beliefs about Others

By Carmen Sainz Villalba This paper studies the information provision and belief updating on the preference for regulation on pensions for own respondents and the preference for regulation on pensions for the population as a whole. Following the work of Sainz Villalba and Konrad (2024), we conduct a survey experiment where we provide information on own characteristics and on characteristics about individuals in other income brackets. We find that respondents who overestimate the pension coverage for low income earners are more likely to want less regulation...

October 2024

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...