Do retirement savings increase in response to information about retirement and expected pensions?

Mathias Dolls, Philipp Dörrenberg, Andreas Peichl and Holger Stichnoth
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Philipp Doerrenberg

Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics

Abstract: How can retirement savings be increased? We explore a unique policy change in the context of the German pension system to study this question. As of 2005 (with a phase-in period between 2002 and 2004), the German pension administration started to send out annual letters providing detailed and comprehensible information about the pension system and individual expected public pension payments. This reform did not change the level of pensions, but only provided information to individuals about their expected pension payments. Using German tax return data, we exploit an age discontinuity to identify the effect of these letters on the behavior of individuals. We find an increase in tax-deductible private retirement savings and provide evidence that this is not due to a crowding-out of other forms of savings. We also show that labor earnings, i.e. the most direct way to increase public pensions, increase after receiving the letter.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (64)

Published in Journal of Public Economics 158(2018): pp. 168-179

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Do retirement savings increase in response to information about retirement and expected pensions? (2018)
Working Paper: Do Retirement Savings Increase in Response to Information About Retirement and Expected Pensions? (2018)
Chapter: Do Retirement Savings Increase in Response to Information about Retirement and Expected Pensions? (2016)
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:lmu:muenar:62846

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Munich Reprints in Economics from University of Munich, Department of Economics Ludwigstr. 28, 80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tamilla Benkelberg ().