Collaborative Research: Lifecycle Savings and Retirement Planning

退休储蓄和退休后的储蓄分配是美国家庭做出的两个最重要的财务决定。然而，现有证据表明，个人没有为退休做好充分的储蓄，尽管他们可以使用延税退休账户。此外，在退休后，家庭似乎不愿意使用年金，因为年金比自我保险更有效地提供了针对长寿风险的保险。最后，许多家庭在每月福利大幅减少的情况下尽早申请社会保障福利。这个项目试图理解这些决定，以及如何通过理论和有偿人类实验来鼓励家庭做出更好的决定。因此，该项目的目标与美国国家科学基金会促进国家繁荣和福利的使命是一致的。该项目由三个主要研究组成，每个研究都将受试者置于现实的个人选择环境中，并探索他们在该环境中做出的决定，这些决定是由货币支付激励的。实验对象将是大学生和从亚马逊土耳其机器人招募的更广泛、人口统计学更丰富的受试者群体。第一项研究探讨了税收递延账户（TDA）在储蓄决策中的作用。该项目的目的是了解tda如何影响储蓄选择，以及tda自动登记等“助推”如何改善储蓄行为。研究二探讨家庭在退休时面临的年金化决策。这个项目的目的是了解影响年金的因素。第三项研究探讨了为什么退休人员不推迟领取社会保障福利。这个项目的目标是了解退休福利赎回决策的积极方面和规范方面。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Saving for retirement and the allocation of accumulated savings upon retirement are two of the most consequential financial decisions that U.S. households make. Yet, the available evidence suggests that individuals do not save adequately for their retirement, despite access to tax deferred retirement accounts. Further, upon retirement, households seem reluctant to make use of annuities which provide insurance against longevity risk more efficiently than self-insurance. Finally, many households claim social security benefits at the earliest possible opportunity at a substantial reduction in their monthly benefits. This project seeks to understand such decisions and what might be done to encourage households to make better decisions using theory and experiments with paid human subjects. Thus, the goals of this project are in line with the NSF's mission to advance national prosperity and welfare.This project consists of three main studies, each of which place subjects in a realistic, individual choice setting and explore the decisions they make in that setting, where the decisions are incentivized by monetary payments. Experimental subjects will be a mix of university students and a broader, more demographically rich subject population recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. The first study explores the role of Tax Deferred Accounts (TDA) for savings decisions. The aim of this project is to understand how TDAs affect savings choices and how "nudges" such as automatic enrollment in TDAs might improve savings behavior. The second study explores the annuitization decision that households face at the time of retirement. The aim of this project is to understand the factors affecting annuity take-up. The third study explores why retirees don't delay taking social security benefits. The goal of this project is to understand both the positive and normative aspects of the retirement benefit redemption decision.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.