New Measures of Pension Knowledge

This paper uses self-reports of pension information from multiple waves of the Health and Retirement Study to examine the consistency, completeness and accuracy of pension knowledge. Previous work examining individual s knowledge of their pensions has relied on comparisons of employer-provided pension plan documents and self-reported pension plan components. Particularly for defined contribution pension plans, such comparisons may be misleading if the employer-reports are considered to be proxies for the true pension values. We show that patterns of pension reporting across time is consistent with substantial misinformation, but that pension information does seem to improve significantly immediately prior to separating from one s job. Conditional on reporting a value for defined benefit income or defined contribution account balances, individuals are reasonably consistent in their reports taken just before and after leaving a job.

Pensions

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