Despite the obvious importance of retirement to employees, their employing organizations, and the larger society, the last comprehensive review of employee retirement in the field of organizational ...science was published more than 20 years ago. As such, the first purpose of this review is to provide a summary of key theoretical and empirical developments in employee retirement research since Beehr in 1986. A second purpose of this review is to highlight inconsistent findings revealed by studies that were designed to answer the same research questions. By identifying and scrutinizing those inconsistent findings, this study expects to provide suggestions and recommendations to further the theoretical development in the field of retirement research to address these research gaps. As a result, this proposed review would be of interest to scholars in a wide variety of areas within the organizational sciences, including human resource management, organizational behavior, organizational theory, and research methods.
This paper analyzes a randomized experiment to shed light on the role of information and social interactions in employees' decisions to enroll in a Tax Deferred Account (TDA) retirement plan within a ...large university. The experiment encouraged a random sample of employees in a subset of departments to attend a benefits information fair organized by the university, by promising a monetary reward for attendance. The experiment multiplied by more than five the attendance rate of these treated individuals (relative to controls), and tripled that of untreated individuals within departments where some individuals were treated. TDA enrollment five and eleven months after the fair was significantly higher in departments where some individuals were treated than in departments where nobody was treated. However, the effect on TDA enrollment is almost as large for individuals in treated departments who did not receive the encouragement as for those who did. We provide three interpretations-differential treatment effects, social network effects, and motivational reward effects-to account for these results.
This paper presents evidence on the resources available to households as they enter retirement. It draws heavily on data collected by the Health and Retirement Study. We calculate the “potential ...additional annuity income” that households could purchase, given their holdings of non-annuitized financial assets at the start of retirement. We also consider the role of housing equity in the portfolios of retirement-age households and explore the extent to which households draw down housing equity and financial assets as they age. Because home equity is often conserved until very late in life, for many households it may provide some insurance against the risk of living longer than expected. Finally, we consider how our findings bear on a number of policy issues, such as the role for annuity defaults in retirement saving plans.
Pendant de nombreuses années, le paiement des rentes de retraite de la sécurité sociale a été soumis à desconditions similaires au Canada et aux États-Unis. Cependant, au cours des 20 dernières ...années, les programmes de sécurité sociale des deux pays ont pris des orientations différentes en ce qui concerne l'âge de la retraite et les conditions d’admissibilité à la rente. Les politiques divergentes des deux pays ont donné lieu à des résultats différents quant à l'âge auquel il est possible de se prévaloir des prestations de sécurité sociale, l'âge auquel les travailleurs quittent leur emploi et l’importance du travail à temps partiel chez les personnes âgées. Les auteurs passent en revue l’évolution des politiques de même que l’expérience des deux pays. Avant de conclure, ils se penchent dans le dernier volet de leur étude sur d’autres facteurs (éducation, chômage et régimes de retraite privés) susceptibles d’expliquer aussi les différences de comportements.
For many years, social security retirement pensions were subject to similar entitlement conditions in Canada and the United States. However, over the past 20 years, Canadian and US social security policy has diverged on the conditions to become entitled to a retirement pension, including the full retirement age. These divergent policies have been associated with different outcomes with respect to the age at which social security benefits are claimed, the age at which workers leave employment, and the extent of part-time work at older ages. Policy reforms and experience in the two countries are reviewed. Before concluding, we examine other factors (education, unemployment, and private pensions) that could also explain behavioral differences.
•Trading increased in response to negative earnings.•Investors tended to shift to less risky funds in response to negative earnings.•Investors responded differently to volatility during the Global ...Financial Crisis.•Active investors tended to have lower returns than passive investors.
This study examines the trading behavior of active investors in Chile’s defined contribution retirement program in response to changes in market returns and volatility from 2007 to 2013, a period that included the Global Financial Crisis. Monthly trading among active investors increased when returns were negative but decreased with greater volatility, though less so during the crisis. The active affiliates tended to move to less risky funds when returns were negative and vice versa. However, higher volatility tended to increase risk taking but again less so during the crisis. Later, recommendations of an investment advisory service had significant effects on the investment behavior of some affiliates. Given the generally poor returns to active investors, the study ends with suggestions for improving Chile’s retirement program.
•Strong behavioral responses to a pension reform lowering the FRA by up to 2 years.•Bunching response at the FRA exceeds the control group’s bunching by 83%.•A 1.0-year decrease in the FRA reduces ...the pension claiming age by 0.3-0.4 years.•Fiscal costs of the reform higher than expected.•Responses driven by reference point effect of new FRA and by financial incentives.
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 public pension insurance accounts, we first document a substantial bunching response at the FRA exceeding the control group’s bunching by 83%. Second, we show in a difference-in-difference setting that a 1.0 year decrease in the FRA leads to a reduction in the average pension claiming age by 0.3–0.4 years. Treated individuals neither have poorer health nor are more likely to be liquidity-constrained than individuals in the control group. Our results suggest that the strong responses to the reform are driven both by the new FRA serving as a reference point and by financial incentives. Estimated fiscal costs of the reform are at the upper end of the range of previous back-of-the-envelope calculations.
•We compute a measure of cognitive decline that predicts well the onset of dementia.•We investigate how retirement affects cognition given age, education and gender.•Retirement at first is ...beneficial, but can be detrimental to cognition later.•In the long run, retirement speeds up cognitive decline if one retires at statutory age.•In the long run retirement has a protective role if one takes early retirement.
We show that a new measure of cognitive decline, that can be computed in longitudinal surveys where respondents perform the same recall memory tests over the years, is highly predictive of the onset of dementia. Using SHARE data, we investigate the way retirement affects cognitive decline over time controlling for age, education and other confounding factors. We find that retirement has a long-term detrimental effect on cognition for individuals who retire at the statutory eligibility age. It plays instead a protective role for those who retire on an early retirement scheme.
Using 41 million observations on savings for the population of Denmark, we show that the effects of retirement savings policies on wealth accumulation depend on whether they change savings rates by ...active or passive choice. Subsidies for retirement accounts, which rely on individuals to take an action to raise savings, primarily induce individuals to shift assets from taxable accounts to retirement accounts. We estimate that each $1 of government expenditure on subsidies increases total saving by only 1 cent. In contrast, policies that raise retirement contributions if individuals take no action—such as automatic employer contributions to retirement accounts—increase wealth accumulation substantially. We estimate that approximately 15% of individuals are ‘‘active savers’’ who respond to tax subsidies primarily by shifting assets across accounts; 85% of individuals are ‘‘passive savers’’ who are unresponsive to subsidies but are instead heavily influenced by automatic contributions made on their behalf. Active savers tend to be wealthier and more financially sophisticated. We conclude that automatic contributions are more effective at increasing savings rates than subsidies for three reasons: (i) subsidies induce relatively few individuals to respond, (ii) they generate substantial crowd-out conditional on response, and (iii) they do not increase the savings of passive individuals, who are least prepared for retirement.
Reinventing Retirement Sharpe, Deanna L.
Journal of family and economic issues,
07/2021, Letnik:
42, Številka:
Suppl 1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Longer lifespans, shift to self-funded retirement, market volatility, and lifestyle changes have reshaped retirement into a significant life stage that requires thoughtful long-term planning and ...diligent preparation. This decade review of 15 research papers published in the
Journal of Family and Economic Issues
between 2010 and 2019 assesses what has been learned regarding consumer context, choice, and behavior during retirement preparation, retirement transition, and retirement living. The significant need for research-based education throughout the retirement planning process was a consistent theme. Directions for future research are explored.
This article considers the potential relationship between providing care for grandchildren and retirement, among women nearing retirement age. Using 47,444 person-wave observations from the Health ...and Retirement Study (HRS), we find that the arrival of a new grandchild is associated with more than an 8 % increase in the retirement hazard despite little overall evidence of a care/retirement interaction. We document that although family characteristics seem to be the most important factors driving the care decision, they are also important determinants of retirement. In contrast, although financial incentives such as pensions and retiree health insurance have the largest influence on retirement, the opportunity cost associated with outside income seems to have little effect on whether a grandmother provides care. There is little evidence of substitution between caring for grandchildren versus providing care for elderly parents or engaging in volunteer activities; grandchild care is instead taken on as an additional responsibility. Our findings suggest that policies aimed at prolonging work life may need to consider grandchild care responsibilities as a countervailing factor, while those policies focused on grandchild care may also affect elderly labor force participation.
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