Saving Incentives for Low- and Middle-Income Families: Evidence from a Field Experiment with H&R Block

Esther Duflo, William Gale, Jeffrey Liebman (), Peter Orszag and Emmanuel Saez

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2006, vol. 121, issue 4, 1311-1346

Abstract: We analyze a randomized experiment in which 14,000 tax filers in H&R Block offices in St. Louis received matches of zero, 20 percent, or 50 percent of IRA contributions. Take-up rates were 3 percent, 8 percent, and 14 percent, respectively. Among contributors, contributions, excluding the match, averaged $765 in the control group and $1100 in the match groups. Taxpayer responses to similar incentives in the Saver's Credit are much smaller. Taxpayers did not game the experiment by receiving a match and strategically withdrawing funds. Tax professionals significantly influenced contribution choices. These results suggest that both incentives and information affect behavior.

Date: 2006
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (132)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/121.4.1311 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Saving Incentives for Low- and Middle-Income Families: Evidence from a Field Experiment with H&R Block (2005)
Working Paper: Saving incentives for low- and middle-income families: Evidence from a field experiment with h&r block (2005)
Working Paper: Saving Incentives for Low- and Middle-Income Families: Evidence from a Field Experiment with H&R Block (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:121:y:2006:i:4:p:1311-1346.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().