IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/epa/cepawp/2018-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

New Evidence on the Effect of Economic Shocks on Retirement Plan Withdrawals

Author

Abstract

Using data from the Survey for Income and Program Participation (SIPP), this study investigates the relationship between withdrawals from 401(k) and IRA accounts and household level economic shocks such as job-loss, job change, divorce, and the onset of poor health. Workers in low-wage households are more likely to withdraw from their accounts than those in middle and high income households, in part because they experience more shocks, and are more likely to withdraw, conditional on experiencing a shock. The above shocks are associated with about a fifth of all retirement account withdrawals and exacerbate pre-existing inequalities in financial preparation for retirement.

Suggested Citation

  • Teresa Ghilarducci & Siavash Radpour & Anthony Webb, 2018. "New Evidence on the Effect of Economic Shocks on Retirement Plan Withdrawals," SCEPA working paper series. 2018-03, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.
    • Handle: RePEc:epa:cepawp:2018-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/images/docs/research/nssr_working_papers/WP-2018-3-Ghilarducci-Radpour-Webb.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert Argento & Victoria L. Bryant & John Sabelhaus, 2015. "Early Withdrawals From Retirement Accounts During The Great Recession," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 33(1), pages 1-16, January.
    2. Burman, Leonard E. & Coe, Norma B. & Gale, William G., 1999. "Lump Sum Distributions From Pension Plans: Recent Evidence and Issues for Policy and Research," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 52(3), pages 553-562, September.
    3. Ghilarducci, Teresa & Saad-Lessler, Joelle & Reznik, Gayle, 2018. "Earnings volatility and 401(k) contributions," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(4), pages 554-575, October.
    4. John Beshears & James J. Choi & Joshua Hurwitz & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian, 2015. "Liquidity in Retirement Savings Systems: An International Comparison," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 420-425, May.
    5. Samuel Dodini & Jeff Larrimore & Logan Thomas, 2016. "Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2015," Reports and Studies 89203, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    6. Burman, Leonard E. & Coe, Norma B. & Gale, William G., 1999. "Lump Sum Distributions from Pension Plans: Recent Evidence and Issues for Policy and Research," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 52(n. 3), pages 553-62, September.
    7. Mario Arthur-Bentil & Samuel Dodini & Jeff Larrimore & Logan Thomas, 2015. "Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2014," Reports and Studies 89201, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    8. Burman, Leonard E. & Coe, Norma B. & Dworsky, Michael & Gale, William G., 2012. "Effects of Public Policies on the Disposition of Pre-Retirement Lump-Sum Distributions: Rational and Behavioral Influences," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 65(4), pages 863-887, December.
    9. Amromin, Gene & Smith, Paul, 2003. "What Explains Early Withdrawals From Retirement Accounts? Evidence From a Panel of Taxpayers," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 56(3), pages 595-612, September.
    10. Alicia H. Munnell & Anthony Webb, 2015. "The Impact of Leakages from 401(k)s and IRAs," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2015-2, Center for Retirement Research.
    11. David Laibson, 1997. "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 443-478.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Retirement Equity Lab, 2019. "Older Workers Will Be More Vulnerable in the Next Recession," SCEPA publication series. 2019-03, Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA), The New School.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Timothy (Jun) Lu & Olivia S. Mitchell & Stephen P. Utkus & Jean A. Young, 2017. "Borrowing From the Future? 401(K) Plan Loans and Loan Defaults," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 70(1), pages 77-110, March.
    2. Wang-Ly, Nathan & Newell, Ben R., 2022. "Allowing early access to retirement savings: Lessons from Australia," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 716-733.
    3. Goda, Gopi Shah & Jones, Damon & Ramnath, Shanthi, 2022. "Temporary and permanent effects of withdrawal penalties on retirement savings accounts✩," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 215(C).
    4. Sumit Agarwal & Jessica Pan & Wenlan Qian, 2020. "Age of Decision: Pension Savings Withdrawal and Consumption and Debt Response," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 43-69, January.
    5. Seonghoon Kim & Kanghyock Koh, 2020. "Does Early Access To Pension Wealth Improve Health?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(4), pages 1783-1794, October.
    6. Mahmoudi, Samir Elsadek, 2023. "Late-career unemployment shocks, pension outcomes and unemployment insurance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    7. Axelle Arquié, 2023. "Fire Sales and Bank Runs in the Presence of a Saving Allocation by Depositors," Working Papers 2023-09, CEPII research center.
    8. Bateman, Hazel & Dobrescu, Loretti I. & Liu, Junhao & Newell, Ben R. & Thorp, Susan, 2023. "Determinants of early-access to retirement savings: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    9. Beshears, John & Choi, James J. & Harris, Christopher & Laibson, David & Madrian, Brigitte C. & Sakong, Jung, 2020. "Which early withdrawal penalty attracts the most deposits to a commitment savings account?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 183(C).
    10. Laureti, Carolina & Szafarz, Ariane, 2023. "Banking regulation and costless commitment contracts for time-inconsistent agents," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    11. John Beshears & James J. Choi & Christopher Harris & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian & Jung Sakong, 2015. "Self Control and Commitment: Can Decreasing the Liquidity of a Savings Account Increase Deposits?," NBER Working Papers 21474, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Burman, Leonard E. & Coe, Norma B. & Dworsky, Michael & Gale, William G., 2012. "Effects of Public Policies on the Disposition of Pre-Retirement Lump-Sum Distributions: Rational and Behavioral Influences," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 65(4), pages 863-887, December.
    13. J. Birkenmaier & Q. Fu, 2019. "Does U.S. Household Financial Access Mediate the Relationship Between a Large Income Drop and Credit Record?," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 267-283, June.
    14. John Beshears & James J. Choi & Joshua Hurwitz & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian, 2015. "Liquidity in Retirement Savings Systems: An International Comparison," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 420-425, May.
    15. Roozbeh Hosseini, 2015. "Adverse Selection in the Annuity Market and the Role for Social Security," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 123(4), pages 941-984.
    16. Torben M. Andersen & Joydeep Bhattacharya, 2021. "Why mandate young borrowers to contribute to their retirement accounts?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(1), pages 115-149, February.
    17. López, Fernando & Rosas, Guillermo, 2022. "COVID-19 and attitudes towards early withdrawal of pension funds: The role of trust and political ideology," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 23(C).
    18. Hurd, Michael & Panis, Constantijn, 2006. "The choice to cash out pension rights at job change or retirement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(12), pages 2213-2227, December.
    19. Elena Derby & Lucas Goodman & Kathleen Mackie & Jacob Mortenson, 2022. "Changes in Retirement Savings During the COVID Pandemic," Papers 2204.12359, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2022.
    20. Engelhardt, Gary V., 2002. "Pre-Retirement Lump-Sum Pension Distributions and Retirement Income Security: Evidence From the Health and Retirement Study," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 55(4), pages 665-685, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    retirement savings; retirement; retirement wealth; economic shocks;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies
    • J32 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Nonwage Labor Costs and Benefits; Retirement Plans; Private Pensions
    • J11 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Demographic Trends, Macroeconomic Effects, and Forecasts

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:epa:cepawp:2018-03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Bridget Fisher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cenewus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.