Adequacy Of Retirement Savings Research Articles

Retirement Saving Over the Life Cycle: Evidence from a Developing Country

ABSTRACT Despite its importance, little is known about how individuals save for retirement through tax-advantaged vehicles over their working lives. Using Thailand’s population of tax returns, this study examines the age profile of retirement saving and explores its implications for retirement savings adequacy. We find that the life-cycle pattern in retirement saving is hump-shaped across age. It rises from 3.0% when one begins working to 4.6% at age 46–48, then declines as one approaches retirement. The retirement saving rates peak later for higher-income workers. For all income groups, we also document the large role of the low-risk saving vehicle throughout the working life. Based on the predicted life-cycle saving profile, we estimate the income replacement rate from tax-advantaged saving vehicles to be around 24%, which is in line with evidence from advanced economies.

Children and Retirement Income Adequacy

A typical household spends about $13,000 per year providing each child with food, clothing, shelter, and other essentials of life, with parental expenditures on children totaling 5% of gross domestic product. Several studies have shown that how children are assumed to interact with household expenditures and saving has first-order effects on judgments of the adequacy of retirement saving by US households, yet the effect of children on their parents’ ability and need to save for retirement is unresolved. This article uses data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) to track changes in household spending and saving as children transition to financial independence and parents’ transition from work into retirement. The PSID data accord with an interpretation of the life-cycle model in which parental households consume more and save less during the period children are being raised, but reduce consumption and increase saving as children become economically independent. These results point toward a more optimistic picture of the adequacy of US household retirement savings.

Retirement Income Sources and Subjective Financial Well-Being: A Comparison of Retirees and Non-Retirees

This study examined whether retirement income sources matter for the subjective financial well-being of retirees and the subjective retirement savings adequacy of non-retirees. Using nationally representative data from the 2017 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, the study found that while income from a defined benefit (DB) plan, defined contribution (DC) plan, and an individual retirement account (IRA) were positively related to the subjective financial well-being of retirees, income from employment and family were negatively related to their subjective financial well-being. Also, retirement preparation with a DB, DC, and IRA was positively related to subjective retirement savings adequacy for non-retirees. The moderating role of age in the relationship between the form of retirement savings for non-retirees and their subjective retirement savings adequacy was significant. Because of the growing importance of individual responsibility for retirement planning, the present study adds to the financial planning knowledge of financial practitioners, educators, and researchers.

Household Portfolios and Financial Preparedness for Retirement

Using a lifecycle model of consumption, saving and portfolio choice combined with linked survey and administrative data on wealth and lifetime earnings we evaluate measures of retirement preparedness. We estimate heterogeneous discount factors for households and compare the estimates of their patience to their replacement rates { the simple measure of- ten used to evaluate the adequacy of retirement savings. We find first that the specification of the model’s asset structure matters quantitatively for preference parameter estimates { households appear to be much more patient when they are assumed to have access only to a risk-free asset compared to when we account for the fact that much of their wealth is stored in higher-return tax-advantaged private pensions and in housing. Second we find that only the most patient households achieve the replacement rates out of final earnings that are often recommended by policy-makers and industry as sensible benchmarks for retirement preparedness. Notwithstanding this, we find that even quite impatient households in the population we study achieve high replacement rates out of lifetime average income - a more sensible summary measure of preparedness for retirement.

Household portfolios and financial preparedness for retirement

Using a lifecycle model of consumption, saving and portfolio choice combined with linked survey and administrative data on wealth and lifetime earnings we evaluate measures of retirement preparedness. We estimate heterogeneous discount factors for households and compare these estimates of their patience to their replacement rates—the simple measure often used to evaluate the adequacy of retirement savings. We find first that the specification of the model's asset structure matters quantitatively for preference parameter estimates—households appear to be much more patient when they are assumed to have access only to a risk‐free asset compared to when we account for the fact that much of their wealth is stored in higher‐return tax‐advantaged private pensions and in housing. Second, we find that only the most patient households achieve the replacement rates out of final earnings that are often recommended by policymakers and industry as sensible benchmarks for retirement preparedness. Notwithstanding this, we find that even quite impatient households in the population we study achieve high replacement rates out of lifetime average income—a more sensible summary measure of preparedness for retirement.

Does Death Anxiety Moderate the Adequacy of Retirement Savings? Empirical Evidence from 40-Plus Clients of Spanish Financial Advisory Firms

This three-wave study analyses the mediating role of financial behavior in the relationship between financial goals and retirement saving adequacy, and the moderating role of Death anxiety. The participants in the study (N = 276) were 40-plus Spanish clients of financial advisory firms. The results show that the relationship between financial goals and retirement saving adequacy is, in fact, mediated by financial behavior. We also found that death anxiety moderates the financial behavior-retirement saving adequacy relationship. The theoretical and practical implications of the study for design are discussed at the end of the paper.

Retirement Savings Adequacy in U.S. Defined Contribution Plans

We evaluate retirement savings adequacy using a large panel of U.S. workers with a 401(k) account. We model medical expenditures, longevity, investment risk, and the likelihood of withdrawals due to hardship, job separation, and reaching age 59 1/2. Based on their current account balances, income, saving, and investment behavior, three in four workers in our sample are not saving enough for retirement. The dispersion is related to plan features, account balances, but also worker saving behavior. A bequest motive, lower housing equity, higher risk aversion, lower discount rates or lower future returns worsen the shortfall. We examine various counterfactual policy interventions.

Perceptions of Retirement Adequacy: Evidence From South Africa

Concerns regarding the adequacy of retirement savings have contributed to the move to encourage better savings behavior. One area of research focuses on understanding the profile of individuals who believe they are preparing adequately for retirement. The current study uses data from a national survey of South Africans to determine how confident workers are about their future retirement income adequacy, and whether behavioral characteristics play a role in their perception of retirement readiness. This study highlights the role that behavioral factors play in perceptions of retirement income adequacy in an African developing market context. In particular, financial risk tolerance, future time perspective, good financial behavior, and self-assessed financial knowledge are all found to be positively related to respondents’ retirement confidence.

The Effect of Workplace Pensions on Household Saving: Evidence From a Natural Experiment in Taiwan

AbstractPopulation aging causes financial imbalances in pay‐as‐you‐go public pension programs. To remedy this problem, while ensuring the adequacy of retirement savings for employees, many countries complement or substitute public pensions by regulating their workplace pensions. This article exploits a pension reform in Taiwan that has mandated, since 2005, that all private‐sector employers contribute at least 6 percent of an employee's monthly wage to an individual pension account. I use workers in the unaffected sectors as a comparison group and employ a difference‐in‐differences method to estimate the impact of the reform on household saving rates. My estimates suggest that making private pensions mandatory significantly reduces the household saving rate by between 2.06 and 2.45 percentage points, thus implying that a $ 10 increase in the workplace pension could offset $ 5 to $ 6 of household savings.

Measuring the Adequacy of Retirement Savings

This paper introduces four metrics for quantifying the adequacy of retirement savings, taking into account all major sources of retirement income. We then apply them to projections of expected future retirement income streams of a representative sample of the Australian population aged 40 and above. We find that omitting one or more pillars of savings significantly biases estimates of retirement savings adequacy. We also find that the four metrics are only weakly correlated with key commonly used indicators of financial well‐being, in particular current income and net worth. Our analysis also points to several shortcomings of the widely used income replacement ratio as an indicator of savings adequacy.

The Life Cycle Model, Replacement Rates, and Retirement Income Adequacy

The key insight of the life cycle model in economics is that a household’s consumption at any given time is determined not so much by its current income as by the total income available to the household over its lifetime. A replacement rate can be a useful tool in approximating the life cycle model’s predictions for how households prepare for retirement. The Social Security Administration’s Office of the Chief Actuary (SSA OACT) publishes two different calculations of retirement income replacement rates, each of which finds that Social Security benefits replace about 40% of a typical retiree’s pre-retirement earnings. Some interpret these figures as indicating that Social Security benefits are insufficiently generous and that U.S. households’ total retirement saving is inadequate. But SSA OACT’s two methods for calculating replacement rates both violate the life cycle model in a meaningful way. SSA OACT’s career-average earnings replacement rates, in which lifetime earnings are first indexed upward by the rate of economywide wage growth, exaggerates by roughly one-fifth the real value of earnings available to a household for consumption over its lifetime. This overstatement lowers a household’s measured ability to replace their pre-retirement earnings. SSA OACT’s final-earnings replacement rates effectively compare Social Security retirement benefits to pre-retirement earnings only in the years in which the individual worked, ignoring the life cycle model’s prediction that household consumption is a function of long-term average earnings, including years in which a household member was not employed. A replacement-rate calculation more consistent with the life cycle model would compare retirement income to an average of real earnings calculated over a significant number of years. Such an approach would find substantially higher replacement rates for the typical retiree. It is important both for Social Security policy and the analysis of overall retirement savings adequacy that replacement-rate calculations build on the insights of the life cycle model that guides most economic analysis of retirement saving.

Spending in Retirement

Retirement savings adequacy estimates are often based on the assumption that individuals spend the same amount every year in retirement, and that the withdrawal rate to fund spending is based on spending down a percentage of retirement savings. We simulate safe consumption rates and compare the amount that wealthy retirees are spending to the amount they could safely spend given different asset return assumptions and investment portfolio allocations. Retirees in the top quintile of financial wealth are spending nowhere near an amount that would place them in danger of running out of money. In fact, the average financial assets of wealthy retirees increased during this time period and most retirees spent less than their income. Setting aside 40% of financial assets to cover uncertain longevity, medical costs, and bequests still results in a consumption gap as high as 47.3.% among higher-wealth retirees.

Measuring retirement savings adequacy: developing a multi-pillar approach in the Netherlands

AbstractThe Dutch pension system is highly ranked on adequacy. These rankings, however, are based on fictitious replacement rates for median income earners. This paper investigates whether the Dutch pension adequacy is still high when we take into account the resources that people really accumulate, using a large administrative data set. A comprehensive approach is followed: not only public and private pension rights, but also private savings and housing wealth are taken into account. Summed over all age- and socioeconomic groups we find a median gross replacement rate of 83% and a net replacement rate of 101%. At retirement age, 31% of all households face a gross replacement rate that is lower than 70% of current income. Public and occupational pensions each account for more than 35% of total pension annuities. Private non-housing assets account for 14% and imputed rental income from net housing wealth accounts for about 10%. Some vulnerable groups, such as the self-employed, have below average replacement rates. Results are fairly similar to results found in the UK, indicating that we should be careful in evaluating the adequacy of pensions systems on the basis of fictitious replacement rates.

Perceived retirement savings adequacy in Hong Kong: an interdisciplinary financial planning model

ABSTRACTUsing an interdisciplinary model of financial planning, we investigated the factors contributing to perceived adequacy of retirement savings among Hong Kong workers by replicating a previous study of American and Dutch workers. The model was also tested for age differences in the way in which the variables operated within the model. These questions were examined using data from a phone survey conducted with 999 Hong Kong workers in 2012. We examined three psychological factors (future time orientation, goal clarity and financial knowledge), three social support variables (early learning from parents, spousal support and friend support) and three institutional factors (quality of employer pensions, trust in banks and fund managers, and trust in the government), as well as retirement savings planning activity and perceived retirement savings adequacy. Path analyses were used to test the model for the whole sample and separately for younger (N=437) and older (N=562) workers. Although a few age differences were found in the path analyses, the model was found to be useful in explaining the factors contributing to retirement savings planning and practices. Finally, we discuss how our findings differ from those of prior studies, and we assess their theoretical and practical implications.

Measuring Adequacy of Retirement Savings

Measuring Adequacy of Retirement Savings

The Effect of Private Pensions on Household Saving: Evidence from Mandatory Employer-Provided Pension Reform

Population aging causes financial imbalance in pay-as-you-go public pension programs.To remedy this problem while ensuring the adequacy of retirement savings for employees, many countries complement or substitute for public pensions by regulating workplace pensions. This paper exploits a pension reform in Taiwan that has mandated, since 2005, that all private-sector employers contribute at least 6% of wages to employees' individual pension accounts monthly. I use the workers in the unaffected sector as a comparison group and employ a difference-in-differences method to estimate the impact of the reform on the household saving rate. My estimates suggest that making private pensions mandatory significantly reduces the household saving rate by between 2.06 and 2.45 percentage points and imply that the degree of substitutability between workplace pensions and saving is about -0.50 to -0.60.

Retirement Savings Adequacy of U.S. Workers

Whether U.S. workers are saving adequately for retirement is an important subject for employer and public policy. The optimal target levels of retirement savings are here determined through a comprehensive consumption and savings model in a life-long planning framework. The actual wealth profiles of a representative sample of U.S. households are here computed from the Survey of Consumer Finances. Comparing the model targets with the actual savings suggests that 44 percent of workers in 2010 are saving inadequately if they were planning to retire at the normal age for full Social Security benefits; alternatively, 51 percent are inadequately prepared for retirement if they were planning to retire at their desired ages, typically younger. The prevalence of savings inadequacy has worsened, by 4-5 percent of households, compared to 2007 when the prospect of retirement looked brighter at the height of the economy and market in the last decade. Asset value losses in retirement accounts during the financial crisis and the decline of DB coverage are significant explanatory factors.

The Adequacy of Retirement Savings: Subjective Survey Reports by Retired Canadians

We examine retired Canadians’ subjective survey reports of satisfaction with finances, and with life, relative to the period before retirement. Many more retired Canadians report enjoying life more than before retirement than the converse, and in 2002 three-quarters of retired Canadians reported being either as satisfied or more satisfied with their finances than they were in the year prior to retirement. The most significant correlate of financial dissatisfaction that our analysis uncovers is involuntary retirement and, in particular, involuntary retirement associated with poor health.

The Adequacy of Retirement Savings: Subjective Survey Reports by Retired Canadians

We examine retired Canadians’ subjective survey reports of satisfaction with finances, and with life, relative to the period before retirement. Many more retired Canadians report enjoying life more than before retirement than the converse, and in 2002 three-quarters of retired Canadians reported being either as satisfied or more satisfied with their finances than they were in the year prior to retirement. The most significant correlate of financial dissatisfaction that our analysis uncovers is involuntary retirement and, in particular, involuntary retirement associated with poor health.

Assessing the Maintenance of Savings Sufficiency Over the First Decade of Retirement

The adequacy of retirement savings is central to the U.S. debate over the effects of Social Security reform and pension changes that would place greater responsibility on individuals for accumulation of retirement resources. We contribute to this discussion by examining the extent to which individuals maintain initial levels of resources over the first decade of retirement. We compare annuitized wealth, including Social Security and pension wealth, to two consumption standards - a household's preretirement earnings and the poverty threshold. We analyze the relationship of individual characteristics to changes in this ratio over time, including the effects of widowhood and post-retirement work.