What You Don't Know Can't Help You: Pension knowledge and retirement decision-making

TitleWhat You Don't Know Can't Help You: Pension knowledge and retirement decision-making
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2008
AuthorsChan, S, Stevens, AH
JournalReview of Economics and Statistics
Volume90
Issue2
Pagination253 -266
KeywordsPensions
Abstract

This paper provides an answer to an important empirical puzzle in the retirement literature: while most people know little about their own pension plans, retirement behavior is strongly affected by pension incentives. We combine administrative and self-reported pension data to measure the retirement response to actual and perceived financial incentives and document an important role for self-reported pension data in determining retirement behavior. Well-informed individuals are far more responsive to pension incentives than the average individual. Ill-informed individuals seem to respond systematically to their own misperceptions of pension incentives.

URLhttps://www.jstor.org/stable/40043144
Endnote Keywords

Pensions

Endnote ID

18450

Citation Key7199