The adequacy and optimality of retirement provision: household behaviour and the design of pensions

英国目前正在对国家养老金和私人养老金安排进行全面改革。最近的政策改革包括从2016年4月开始引入“新的国家养老金”，进一步提高国家养老金年龄，并在工作场所养老金中引入“自动登记”。这些变化是在长期趋势持续的背景下发生的，包括许多雇主提供的养老金慷慨程度下降和预期寿命延长。这些趋势和政策改革对家庭的储蓄和退休决定具有重大影响。总的来说，在当前的环境中，积累资源为退休提供资金变得越来越重要，但随着国家和雇主退后一步，确保这种积累的责任正越来越多地转移到个人身上。我们提出一项研究方案，研究这种不断变化的环境和最近的政策改革对家庭行为和福祉的影响。我们研究的两个核心问题是：1)处于工作年龄的家庭是否为退休做了适当的储蓄？连续几代领取养老金的人退休后的生活水平可能是什么？2)最近的改革和其他长期趋势对家庭储蓄和退休决定可能产生的长期影响是什么？不同的个人群体（出生在20世纪40年代、50年代、60年代和70年代的人）面临着非常不同的私人退休储蓄动机（以及以不同类型的资产进行储蓄），随着他们接近传统意义上的工作寿命的终点，他们将面临不同的退休动机。这在政策上引起了相当大的关注，即虽然那些最近退休的人在退休时平均拥有相对较高的资源，但那些目前正在工作的人却没有为退休储蓄足够的钱。我们的目标是通过探索当前工作年龄家庭的未来退休生活水平，大大增加可供政策制定者使用的证据基础。为了做到这一点，我们将利用这些群体已经做出的决策的最佳可用数据，考虑他们过去的收入以及他们面临的国家和私人养老金结构，来估计他们未来的行为。然后，我们将考虑他们可能的退休生活水平与工作期间的生活水平和绝对贫困阈值进行比较，以评估家庭储蓄的“适当性”。我们研究的一个重要特征是，考虑到不同人群面临的和未来将面临的不同激励，研究这在不同人群中有何不同。我们还将分别分析养老金和储蓄环境的各种变化——包括具体的政策改革——对家庭储蓄和退休行为的影响，从而对家庭资源的影响。这将使我们能够评估这些变化对退休生活水平的影响。我们建议考虑的趋势和政策变化的影响是：一些雇主提供的养老金的普及率下降，国家养老金年龄的提高，新的国家养老金的引入，年金价格的变化，以及“自动登记”中包含的储蓄的财务激励。这种分析对决策者来说相当重要。了解近期极其大规模的政策改革对家庭行为和生活水平的长期影响，对于评估一项政策在实现其目标方面的有效性至关重要。此外，需要更好地了解养老金和储蓄环境中一些长期变化的影响，以便更好地了解哪些（如果有的话）未来的政策改革可能是可取的。

The UK is currently in the midst of sweeping changes to both state pension provision and private pension arrangements. Recent policy reforms include the introduction of the 'new state pension' from April 2016, further increases in the state pension age and the introduction of 'auto-enrolment' into workplace pensions. These changes are happening against a backdrop of continuing long-term trends, including a decline in the generosity of many employer-provided pensions and increasing life expectancies. These trends and policy reforms have significant implications for households' saving and retirement decisions. In very general terms, the environment is one in which accumulating resources to finance retirement is increasingly important, but the responsibility for ensuring such accumulation happens is shifting ever more to the individual as the state and employers take a step back.We propose a programme of research that will study the implications of this changing environment and recent policy reforms for household behaviour and well-being. Our two central sets of research questions are:1) Are working-age households saving appropriately for retirement? What will be the likely standards of living in retirement of successive generations of pensioners?2) What are the likely long-run impacts of recent reforms and other long run trends on household saving and retirement decisions?Different cohorts of individuals (those born in the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s) have faced very different incentives to save privately for retirement (and to do so in different types of assets), and will face different incentives to retire as they approach what would traditionally have been the end of working life. This had led to considerable policy concern that while those recently retired have, on average, done so with relatively high levels of resources, those currently in working life are not saving enough for their retirement.We aim to add considerably to the evidence base available for policy makers by exploring what can be known now about the future retirement living standards of currently working age households. We will do this by using the best available data on the decisions that these cohorts have already made, taking into account their past earnings and the structure of state and private pensions that they face, to estimate their future behaviour. We will then consider how their likely retirement standards of living will compare to those enjoyed during working life and to absolute thresholds of poverty in order to assess the 'appropriateness' of the household saving. An important feature of our research will be to study how this differs across different cohorts, given the different incentives they have faced and will face in future.We will also analyse separately the impact of various changes to the pensions and savings environment - including specific policy reforms - on household saving and retirement behaviour, and consequently on households' resources. This will allow us to assess the impact of these changes on standards of living in retirement. The trends and policy changes whose effects we propose to consider are: the declining prevalence of some employer-provided pensions, increases in the state pension age, the introduction of the new state pension, changes in annuity prices, and the financial incentives to save encompassed in 'auto-enrolment'.Such analysis is of considerable importance for policy makers. Understanding the long-run impact of recent, extremely large policy reforms on households' behaviour and living standards is vital for any assessment of a policy's effectiveness at meeting its objectives. Furthermore, greater understanding of the impact of some long-running changes in the pensions and saving environment is needed to better understand which (if any) future policy reforms may be desirable.