The Power of Percentage: Quantitative Framing of Pension Income

By Henriette M. Prast (Tiburg University) & Federica Teppa (De Nederlandsche Bank) We investigate whether the quantitative frame used to communicate future pension income to plan members matters for perceived pension income adequacy. We allocate plan members randomly to one of four pension income framing conditions: annual pension income, monthly pension income, pension income as percentage of current income, pension income as decimal of current income. We find that expressing projected pension income as a percentage (decimal) of current income...