Journal of Pension Economics & Finance最新文献

Many nations incentivize retirement saving by letting workers defer taxes on pension contributions, imposing them when retirees withdraw their funds. Using a dynamic life-cycle model, we show how ‘Rothification’ – that is, taxing 401(k) contributions rather than payouts – alters saving, investment, consumption, and Social Security claiming patterns. We find that taxing pension contributions instead of withdrawals leads to delayed retirement, somewhat lower lifetime tax payments, and relatively small reductions in consumption. Indeed, the two tax regimes generate quite similar relative inequality metrics: the relative consumption inequality ratio under taxed-exempt-exempt (TEE) is only 4% higher than that in the exempt-exempt-taxed (EET) case. Moreover, results indicate that the Gini measures are also strikingly similar under the EET and the TEE regimes for lifetime consumption, cash on hand, and 401(k) assets, differing by only 1–4%. While tax payments are higher early in life under the TEE regime, they are slightly lower in the long run. Moreover, higher EET tax payments are also accompanied by higher volatility. We therefore find few reasons for policymakers to favor either tax approach on egalitarian or revenue-enhancing grounds.

We study causal effects of two early retirement reforms. Reform 1 increased normal retirement age stepwise from 60 to 63. Simultaneously, it became possible to use early retirement with benefit discounts. Reform 2 increased the age of early retirement stepwise from 60 to 63. We investigate behavioral responses to the reforms using administrative data and difference-in-differences strategies. We find strong and significant causal effects of both reforms. Individuals postponed retirement, stayed employed longer, postponed unemployment, and shifted to alternative pathways into retirement. The overall use of the retirement system declined by about 1.5 and 2 months per person after each of the two reforms. Individuals with low pension wealth and those who were affected immediately by the reform responded more strongly.

We investigate the impact of a 2005 policy that provided more generous terms for delaying state pensions in the United Kingdom. First, we find that the policy reduced the fraction of males and possibly females receiving pensions at the earliest eligibility age and shortly thereafter. This shift affected cohorts who became eligible for state pensions at or after the policy change. Second, the policy is associated with increases in male and female labor supply around the earliest pension eligibility age, consistent with some individuals working longer to finance pension delay. However, further analysis suggests that these labor supply changes are more likely to reflect longer-term trends across birth cohorts rather than a causal effect of the policy.

Based on two decades of Danish register data at the individual level, this paper finds that a 1-dollar increase in pension wealth leads to a 42-cent rise in total debt for a group of low-wage earners. Collective bargaining in the labor market provides time-sector variation in mandatory pension contribution rates, which we exploit in two empirical research designs; an event study and a cross-sectional instrumental variable regression model. Both methods demonstrate that the debt rise is accompanied by increased housing wealth and homeownership rates. Together, the empirical evidence indicates that mandatory pension contributions lead to a significant increase in net wealth, as well as in gross debt.