{"title":"Trust in pension funds, or the importance of being financially sound","authors":"H. van Dalen, K. Henkens","doi":"10.1017/s147474722200021x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s147474722200021x","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Is the trust that participants have in their pension fund affected by its funding ratio (i.e., asset/liabilities ratio)? Based on survey, carried out in October 2021, among Dutch pension fund participants we link our survey data to the funding ratio of their pension fund as registered by the pension regulator. First, we show that the level of the funding ratio of their pension fund is positively associated with the trust level of participants. Pension funds with large buffers are associated with a high level of trust. Second, sub-group analyses show that the trust of younger participants is weakly related to the level of the funding ratio and this association is strong and positive for older (55+)/retired participants. It suggests that an interest in or awareness about the financial health of one's pension fund is associated with a higher responsiveness of participants in terms of trust. And third, firm-based pension funds enjoy a higher level of trust compared to sector-based pension funds.","PeriodicalId":46635,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pension Economics & Finance","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47404101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
G. Goda, Emilie Jackson, L. Nicholas, Sarah S. Stith
{"title":"Older Workers’ Employment and Social Security Spillovers through the Second Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic","authors":"G. Goda, Emilie Jackson, L. Nicholas, Sarah S. Stith","doi":"10.3386/w30567","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3386/w30567","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a large and immediate drop in employment among U.S. workers, along with major expansions of unemployment insurance (UI) and work from home. We use Current Population Survey and Social Security application data to study employment among older adults and their participation in disability and retirement insurance programs through the second year of the pandemic. We find ongoing improvements in employment outcomes among older workers in the labor force, along with sustained higher levels in the share no longer in the labor force during this period. Applications for Social Security disability benefits remain depressed, particularly for Supplemental Security Income. In models accounting for the expiration of expanded UI, we find some evidence that the loss of these additional financial supports resulted in an increase in disability claiming. Social Security retirement benefit claiming is approximately 3% higher during the second year of the pandemic.","PeriodicalId":46635,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pension Economics & Finance","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45142727","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How taxes impact the choice between an annuity and the lump sum at retirement","authors":"Monika Bütler, Alma Ramsden","doi":"10.1017/s1474747222000178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1474747222000178","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 We analyze how taxes affect the choice between a life-long annuity and a one-off lump sum payment, the so-called annuitization decision. Using administrative data from a large Swiss pension fund, we impute taxes for the lump sum and the life-long annuity option. We show that taxes can explain a significant part of the variation in annuity rates. Exploiting kinks in the tax schedule of the one-off lump sum, we further find evidence for tax optimization strategies. Our findings suggest that individuals react strongly to tax incentives when making retirement choices.","PeriodicalId":46635,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pension Economics & Finance","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-08-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44058161","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Félix Villatoro, Olga Fuentes, Julio Riutort, Pamela Searle
{"title":"Mislearning and (poor) performance of individual investors","authors":"Félix Villatoro, Olga Fuentes, Julio Riutort, Pamela Searle","doi":"10.1017/s147474722200018x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s147474722200018x","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We study individuals' incentives to make investment decisions. Using data from a large pension system in Chile we find that individuals who are active in managing their investments have, on average, poor performance. We provide robust evidence suggesting that learning plays an important part in this phenomenon. Indeed, individuals who have made successful investment decisions in the past go on to trade more frequently. However, this result holds when using a naive definition for successful decisions. Also, average performance is negatively related to the number of investment decisions, casting doubt on the existence of market timing skills.</p>","PeriodicalId":46635,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pension Economics & Finance","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138519061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Caregiving subsidies and spousal early retirement intentions","authors":"Joan Costa-Font, Cristina Vilaplana-Prieto","doi":"10.1017/s1474747222000142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1474747222000142","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Balancing caregiving duties and employment can be both financially and emotionally burdensome, especially when care is provided to a spouse at home. Caregiving subsidies can play a role in helping caregivers to cope with such duties. This paper demonstrates how providing financial respite for caregivers can influence individuals' decisions to retire early. We investigate the impact of a reform that extended long-term care (LTC) benefits (in the form of subsidies and supports) on the intention of a caregiving spouse to retire early in Spain. We subsequently examine the effect of austerity spending cuts reducing such publicly funded benefits, and we compare the estimates to the effects of an early retirement reform among private sector workers around the same time. Our preferred estimates suggest evidence of a 10pp reduction in early retirement intentions after the extension of LTC benefits even though the effect is heterogeneous by type of benefit. Consistently, austerity spending cuts in benefits are found to weaken retirement intentions. Even more importantly, our estimates suggest that cuts in caregiving subsidies exert a much stronger effect on early retirement intentions than actual early retirement reforms.</p>","PeriodicalId":46635,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pension Economics & Finance","volume":"65 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138519054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The optimal cyclical design for a target benefit pension plan","authors":"Lv Chen, Danping Li, Yumin Wang, X. Zhu","doi":"10.1017/s1474747222000099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1474747222000099","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this paper, we derive the optimal cyclical design of a target benefit (TB) pension plan that balances the sustainability and the benefit stability using the optimal control approach. The optimal design possesses a linear risk sharing structure with cyclical parameters. We observe that the optimal design should be pro-cyclical in the usual circumstances, but counter-cyclical when the pension plan is severely in deficit. We compare the TB plans with the defined benefit plans and conclude that a more aggressive investment strategy should be adopted for the TB plans. In the end, we provide a cautionary note on the optimal control approach in the study of the TB plans.","PeriodicalId":46635,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pension Economics & Finance","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48637555","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Influencing the choice of pension distribution at retirement","authors":"Robert L. Clark, Olivia S. Mitchell","doi":"10.1017/s1474747222000130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s1474747222000130","url":null,"abstract":"<p>One of the most important financial decisions that pension participants make concerns how they access their pension assets when they terminate employment with their plan sponsor. Their choices depend both on own preferences and the options offered by their retirement plan. This paper examines both past and future pension withdrawal choices for those with defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) pensions, separately. Our data are drawn from a set of pension distribution questions we fielded in the Understanding American Study. Results show significant differences in distribution choices based on the type of retirement plan, with individuals covered by DB plans significantly more likely to select annuities compared to similar employees covered by DC plans. We also find differences in how higher annual income affects annuity choices based on coverage by DB plans. Individuals with lower levels of financial literacy and lower annual income have less knowledge of basic pension characteristics.</p>","PeriodicalId":46635,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Pension Economics & Finance","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.2,"publicationDate":"2022-06-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138519089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}