Accumulation and Decumulation in Retirement Savings Plans

描述（由申请人提供）：在过去的30年里，固定缴款（DC）储蓄计划，如401(k)s，已经逐渐取代固定收益（DB）养老金计划，成为提供退休收入的主要私人赞助工具。雇主现在赞助了超过65万个401(k)计划，参与者超过8700万人，资产达2万亿美元。401(k)计划的参与人数超过了DB计划的参与人数，比例为5:2。这一延续申请提出的项目分析了制度、经济和心理机制如何相互作用，以塑造固定缴款储蓄计划中的参与、储蓄、资产配置、储蓄泄漏、年化和累积结果。我们正在进行的研究已经确定的关键机制包括财务激励、制度约束、拖延、锚定、现状偏见、框架、突出性、同伴影响、启发式、心理会计和有限理性。我们的目标是更好地了解这些机制，以便机构能够优化，以改善退休储蓄的结果。在我们当前R01的基础上，这个延续提案有四个目标来补充我们之前和正在进行的工作。首先，我们计划研究影响参与、储蓄率和退休财富积累的储蓄计划的特征。具体来说，我们将在雇主采用罗斯401(k)计划的背景下，研究改变退休账户菜单的影响和储蓄启发式的作用。我们还将测量数字心理锚点、显著阈值和目标设定提示的影响，这些提示包括在与员工的沟通中。其次，我们计划确定雇主赞助计划的制度特征，这些特征会影响储蓄挤出和储蓄“泄漏”。我们将衡量“无动机”储蓄者的自动登记与401(k)养老金提现的增加之间的联系，这种增加发生在员工从公司离职时。我们还将衡量不同类型储蓄账户的挤占程度，包括健康储蓄账户（HSA）和退休储蓄账户。第三，我们计划研究影响累积决策的退休计划制度特征。我们将研究改变定期存款账户和定期存款账户的年金化选项集的影响，使部分年金化成为完全年金化的替代方案的影响，以及使长寿风险和年金化更容易理解的新决策工具的影响。第四，我们将扩大我们的12年固定缴款储蓄计划参与者纵向数据库的时间范围和公司数量。我们还将创建四个全新的数据库，用于养老金计划和固定缴款计划的年金化决策。这些新的数据库将覆盖数百万个人。1参见EBRI员工福利数据手册（2010）。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Over the last 30 years, defined contribution (DC) savings plans, such as 401(k)s, have gradually replaced defined benefit (DB) pension plans as the primary privately sponsored vehicle for providing retirement income. Employers now sponsor over 650,000 401(k) plans with more than 87 million participants and $2 trillion in assets.1 401(k) plan participants outnumber DB plan participants by 5 to 2. This continuation application proposes projects that analyze how institutional, economic, and psychological mechanisms interact to shape participation, savings, asset allocation, savings leakage, annuitization, and decumulation outcomes in defined contribution savings plans. Key mechanisms that our ongoing research has identified include financial incentives, institutional constraints, procrastination, anchoring, status quo bias, framing, salience, peer influence, heuristics, mental accounting, and bounded rationality. Our goal is to better understand these mechanisms so that institutions can be optimized to improve retirement savings outcomes. Building on our current R01, this continuation proposal has four aims that complement our previous and ongoing work. First, we plan to study the features of savings plans that affect participation, savings rates, and retirement wealth accumulation. Specifically, we will study, in the context of employer adoption of Roth 401(k) plans, the effects of changing the menu of retirement accounts and the role of savings heuristics. We will also measure the impact of numerical psychological anchors, salient thresholds, and goal-setting prompts that are included in communications to employees. Second, we plan to identify institutional features of employer-sponsored plans that affect savings crowd-out and savings "leakage." We will measure the link between the automatic enrollment of "unmotivated" savers and resulting increases in 401(k) cash-outs that occur when workers separate from firms. We will also measure the magnitude of crowd-out across different types of savings accounts, including health savings accounts (HSA) and retirement savings accounts. Third, we plan to study institutional features of retirement plans that affect decumulation decisions. We will study the effect of changing the set of annuitization options in DB and DC accounts, the effect of making partial annuitization salient as an alternative to total annuitization, and the impact of new decision tools that make longevity risk and annuitization easier to understand. Fourth, we will expand the time horizon and number of firms in our 12-year longitudinal database on defined contribution savings plan participants. We will also create four entirely new databases on annuitization decisions in both DB and DC retirement plans. These new databases will cover several million individuals. 1 See EBRI Databook on Employee Benefits (2010). PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Defined contribution savings plans have become the primary source of voluntary retirement saving in the U.S. and play a critical role in funding the retiremen consumption and out-of-pocket health expenditures of older adults. The proposed research will analyze how institutional, economic, and psychological mechanisms interact to shape participation, savings, asset allocation, savings leakage, annuitization, and decumulation choices in defined contribution savings plans. The application also proposes to expand existing data and create a number of new data resources on savings plan participants.