Recently, many papers have shown evidence of a positive association between financial market participation and wealth holdings. It is often claimed that individuals with a higher level of financial market participation exhibit a higher propensity for planning retirement. In their planning...

This report gives a new and up-to-date picture of the giving and receiving of significant intergenerational wealth transfers during life, summarising the findings of two research papers. New data from the Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) allow us to build a comprehensive picture of the flow of...

How should pensions be taxed? We propose income tax and National Insurance reforms that would more evenly support pension saving. Pensions are the biggest component of household wealth and are treated favourably by the tax system. That means getting pensions tax design right matters. It matters...

Estimates the expected present discounted value (EPDV) of future payouts on both immediate and deferred annuities are sensitive to the discount rate used to value future payment streams and assumptions about future mortality rates. This paper illustrates this with respect to annuities that were...

As in most economically developed countries, the birth rate has been low for decades in Hungary, and as a result, the population is constantly declining. At the same time, life expectancy at birth significantly increased over the last 20 years, nearly by two years for both men and women. As a...

In a series of online experiments, we examine whether increasing the incentives to save by reducing the income tax rate on pensions results in higher savings. Our findings show that reducing the income tax rate on pensions has almost no significant effect on savings behavior. However, if we vary...

Pension investors are exposed to the risk of inflation eroding the purchasing power of their savings. Their risk is particularly high due to saving for retirement taking place over many decades. However, few pre-retirement investment strategies incorporate explicit inflation-proofing. It is...

This study provides novel evidence about the pension wealth elasticity of employment. For the identification we exploit reform-induced variation of pension wealth that is related to the number of children but which does not affect the implicit tax rate of employment. We use a...

In this report, we document differences in pension incomes and pension saving between men and women in the UK, and analyse the drivers behind these differences. In particular, we examine two different 'gender pension gaps'. First is the gap in average private and state pension incomes between...

Private pension saving among the self-employed population in the UK has been falling dramatically over the last few decades, and this has led to a heightened policy focus on how to boost pension saving among this group. In this report we analyse patterns of private pension saving among the...

The number of self-employed workers has been rising rapidly in the UK in recent decades. At the same time, private pension participation among this group has fallen sharply, leading to increasing concern among policymakers about the preparedness for retirement of self-employed workers. This...

Though ample empirical evidence demonstrates the relationship between objective financial literacy and retirement planning, we have a limited understanding of the role of individuals' subjective financial literacy in their retirement planning. In this study, we examine how individuals' financial...

This report makes the case for a new review of the pension system in the UK. There are a number of key challenges facing future generations of pensioners that threaten their living standards in retirement and which, without policy action, mean many are likely to face substantial financial...

We study whether a better knowledge of the functioning of pay-as-you-go pension systems and recent demographic trends in the hosting country affects natives’ attitudes towards immigration. In two online experiments in Italy and Spain, we randomly treated participants with a video explaining...

This paper analyzes behavioral responses to a 2014 reform in the German public pension system that lowered the full retirement age (FRA) of individuals with a long contribution history by up to two years and framed the new FRA as reference age for retirement. Using administrative data from...

To determine how wives' and husbands' retirement options affect their spouses' (and their own) labour supply decisions, we exploit (early) retirement cutoffs by way of a regression discontinuity design. Several German pension reforms since the early 1990s have gradually raised women's retirement...

I study the impact of old-age assistance on mortality using the introduction of public pensions in the UK in 1909 as a quasi-natural experiment. Exploiting the newly created pension eligibility age through a difference-in-difference as well as an event-time design, I show that elderly mortality...

This paper studies how access to public pensions affects old-age support and child investment in traditional societies. Guided by predictions from an overlapping generations model, we analyze the influences of a new pension program in rural People's Republic of China, using a...

We provide new evidence of forward-looking labor supply responses to changes in pension wealth. We exploit a 2014 German reform that increased pension wealth for mothers by an average of 4.4% per child born before January 1, 1992. Using administrative data on the universe of working histories,...

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...

In this paper, the number of years, Y it took for retirement income derived from the combination of an investment portfolio and a lifetime annuity to fall below a constant, inflation-linked, target income was investigated for retirees in the UK and US. The results indicate that there was a...

This paper documents the long-term dynamic participation into the New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) in China, which has been expanded to nearly universal coverage. Although the NRPS is highly subsidized and strongly promoted by Chinese government, a large proportion of residents procrastinate in...

Using New Zealand Household Economic Survey (HES) 2018 data, we examine the impact of direct financial market participation post-retirement on retirement income in New Zealand. Our results demonstrate the importance of post-retirement financial market participation in the enhancement of...

This paper investigates retirees' optimal purchases of fixed and variable longevity income annuities using their defined contribution (DC) plan assets and given their expected Social Security benefits. As an alternative, we also evaluate using plan assets to boost Social Security benefits...

The study examines the impact of financial investment on the individual's confidence in a happy future retirement using data from 735 respondents in the Bank Consortium Holding Limited (BCT) Public Opinion Survey on Retirement Happiness in 2017. The result shows that holding the investment...

Six years of data from the TIAA Institute-GFLEC Personal Finance Index (P-Fin Index) clearly demonstrate that U.S. adults with greater financial literacy tend to have better financial well-being. This report shows that retirement readiness, a specific realm of financial well-being, likewise...

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 aimed to end sex-based discrimination at work and in education. Since the passage of these landmark acts, gender equity has come a long way. More women than men are earning college degrees, including Ph.Ds., and women do...

This paper develops a general equilibrium life-cycle model with endogenous retirement and disability risk, in order to quantify the impact of recent pension reforms in Germany. At certain ages households may either apply for disability pensions (DP) or old-age pensions (OAP), de-pending on...

US state pension plans generally use overstated discount rates based on historical performance, creating the appearance of healthy funding at the cost of future underfunding. Conversely, adopting a US Treasury discount rate, or another alternative suggested by previous literature, would cause...