Accumulation and Decumulation in Retirement Savings Plans

描述(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，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。雇主现在赞助超过650,000个401(K)计划，参与者超过8,700万人，资产价值2万亿美元。1 401(K)计划参与者的数量是DB计划参与者的5：2。这一续展申请提出了一些项目，分析制度、经济和心理机制如何相互作用，塑造固定缴款储蓄计划中的参与、储蓄、资产配置、储蓄流失、年化和汇总结果。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、现状偏差、框架、显着性、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，以便对机构进行优化，以改善退休储蓄结果。在我们目前R01的基础上，这项延续提案有四个目标，补充了我们以前和正在进行的工作。首先，我们计划研究储蓄计划影响参与率、储蓄率和退休财富积累的特征。具体地说，我们将在雇主采用Roth 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。我们还将衡量员工沟通中包含的数字心理锚、显著阈值和目标设定提示的影响。其次，我们计划确定雇主赞助的计划的制度特征，这些特征会影响储蓄挤出和储蓄“流失”。我们将衡量“无动机”储户的自动登记与工人从公司分离时产生的401(K)现金支出增加之间的联系。我们还将衡量不同类型储蓄账户的挤出程度，包括健康储蓄账户(HSA)和退休储蓄账户。第三，我们计划研究影响集体决策的退休计划的制度特征。我们将研究改变DB和DC账户年化选项集的效果，将部分年化作为整体年化的替代方案的效果，以及使寿命风险和年化更容易理解的新决策工具的影响。第四，我们将扩大12年固定缴款储蓄计划参与者纵向数据库中的时间范围和公司数量。我们还将在DB和DC退休计划中创建四个全新的年化决策数据库。这些新的数据库将覆盖数百万人。1见EBRI关于员工福利的数据库(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).