Dynamics in private pension saving across the income distribution

人们为退休存多少钱是极其重要的。这不仅关系到个人福祉，也关系到整个社会，因为私人储蓄不足的人更依赖政府福利。这一点越来越重要，因为人们的寿命越来越长。利用各种政策手段鼓励退休储蓄。最值得注意的是，养老金储蓄有很大的税收优惠，这在近年来以各种方式发生了变化。2012年，中国政府开始推出养老金自动登记政策，要求雇主将大部分员工纳入职场养老金计划，并向该计划缴费。这导致近90%的合格雇员将养老金存起来。尽管政府采取了政策行动，但人们仍然担心一些群体没有为退休储蓄足够的资金。自雇人士尤其令人担忧，因为他们投资养老金的可能性要小得多，而且即使投资了，他们的储蓄也比雇员少。对于个体经营者来说，没有类似的自动登记，但政府正在积极研究政策选择。重要的是要了解社会中不同群体的养老金储蓄模式以及各种政策在形成决策中的作用。该项目将通过使用税务机关HMRC持有的养老金缴款的综合信息，为这一领域提供见解。具体来说，我们将使用个人或其雇主对个人养老金的所有养老金缴款数据，并将其与个人（匿名）税务记录联系起来。后者提供了一个人有多少收入以及收入是如何产生的信息。我们将能够长期跟踪人们，从而观察养老金储蓄如何随着收入和政策环境的变化而变化。我们将创建第一个也是唯一一个提供人们在个人养老金中投入多少钱的全面图景的数据集。目前最好的调查数据是不完整的，因为它们只涵盖了雇员（不包括自营职业者或无薪工作的人）；随着时间的推移，对人们的信息有限；不包括在工作场所以外缴纳的养老金；记录人们的收入，但不记录他们的总收入（这对许多收入最高的人尤其重要）。我们将创建的数据将包括雇员和自雇人士，为自己的公司工作的人和没有工作的人。我们将收集所有个人养老金缴款，并获得总收入的详细信息。我们将使用这些数据来记录雇员和自营职业者的养老金储蓄，包括养老金缴款如何随着人们从就业转向自营职业而变化。自本世纪初以来，自雇人士一直是英国劳动力中增长最快的部分。目前，英国约有15%的劳动力是自雇人士，但这一群体的流动性很大——每年都有许多人离开自雇岗位。我们将研究自动登记是否改变了那些作为雇员自动登记并继续自雇的人的储蓄习惯。这将为自动登记运作的渠道提供重要证据，并将为鼓励自雇人士储蓄的政策设计提供信息。随着新的研究数据集的建立，将有机会解决许多其他重要的政策问题，例如，税收政策的各个方面如何影响不同类型的人选择在养老金中储蓄多少，以及他们更广泛的投资和经济选择。

How much people save for their retirement is extremely important. It matters not only for individuals' wellbeing but also for society in general because those with insufficient private savings are more reliant on government benefits. It is increasingly important because people are living longer. Various policy levers are used to encourage retirement saving. Most notably, there are large tax advantages to pension saving that have been changed in various ways in recent years. In 2012, the government began to roll out pension auto-enrolment, a policy through which employers are required to put most of their employees into a workplace pension scheme and contribute towards it. This has led to almost 90% of eligible employees saving in a pension. Despite policy action, there are ongoing concerns that some groups are not saving enough for their retirement. The self-employed are a particular concern because they are much less likely to invest in a pension and, when they do, they save less than employees. There is no equivalent to auto-enrolment for the self-employed but government are actively looking at policy options. It is important to understand the patterns of pension saving across different groups in society and the role of various policies in shaping decisions. This project will provide insights in this area by using comprehensive information on pension contributions held by HMRC, the tax authority. Specifically, we will use data on all pension contributions made either by individuals or their employers to personal pensions, and link this to individuals' (anonymised) tax records. The later provides information on how much income a person has and how that income is generated. We will be able to track people over time, thereby observing, for example, how pension saving changes as income and the policy environment changes. We will be creating the first and only dataset that provides a comprehensive picture of how much money people are putting into personal pensions. The best available survey data are incomplete because they: cover only employees (not the self-employed or those not in paid work); has limited information on people over time; does not cover pension contributions made outside of a workplace; records people's earnings but not their total income (which is particularly important for many of those on the highest incomes). The data we will create will include employees as well as the self-employed, people working for their own companies and those not working. We will capture all contributions to personal pensions and have detailed information on total income. We will use the data to document the pension savings of employees and the self-employed, including how pension contributions change as people move from employment to self-employment. The self-employed have been the fastest growing part of the UK labour force since the early 2000s. Around 15% of the UK workforce is now self-employed but there is much churn in this population -many enter leave self-employment each year. We will study whether auto-enrolment has changed the saving habits of people who were auto-enrolled as an employee and went on to be self-employed. This will provide important evidence on the channels through which auto-enrolment operates and will inform the design of policies to encourage saving among the self-employed. With the new dataset established for research, there will be opportunities to address many other important policy questions, including, for example, how various aspect of tax policy affect how much different types of people chose to save in a pension and their wider investment and economic choices.