IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nzt/nztwps/04-08.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of Workplace and Personal Superannuation Schemes on Net Worth: Evidence from the Household Savings Survey

Author

Abstract

The central question addressed in this paper is: does having a workplace or personal superannuation scheme result in a higher level of accumulation for retirement? The paper presents a range of information about the participation and level of holdings in workplace and personal superannuation schemes based on data from the Household Saving Survey (HSS). While the proportion of people holding a scheme is small (around 10%), the value of a scheme for those enrolled represents about one third their total net worth. There is evidence that being enrolled in a workplace scheme is associated with higher levels of total net worth, yet this is not true of personal schemes, once several personal characteristics have been controlled for. Nevertheless, it is evident that those in either workplace schemes or personal have not fully substituted this form of saving for other vehicles. In fact in all cases there appears to be complementarity, whereby higher holdings in a scheme are associated with higher holdings in other forms of savings. Typically, an additional dollar invested in a workplace scheme is associated with higher total net worth of between one and two dollars, while for personal schemes the figure typically exceeds two dollars. Two possible explanations for this arise. The first is that by enrolling in a scheme an individual acquires heightened awareness of the importance of retirement saving and saves additional amounts in other vehicles. An alternative hypothesis is that there may be some self-selection bias; those who have enrolled might be more inclined to save than the population as a whole. There is no direct way to use the data to discriminate between these two possibilities. However holding constant a wide range of other factors (including age, income, ethnicity, residence, etc) it is reasonable to suppose that the more likely sources of selection bias may have been controlled for. If this is the case then the finding that more holdings of workplace superannuation are associated with greater total retirement wealth may well have arisen from an "awareness" or "recognition" effect of belonging to a scheme. In this event, policies which foster enrolment might lead to greater retirement accumulation by those in a scheme.

Suggested Citation

  • Grant M Scobie & Trinh Le, 2004. "The Impact of Workplace and Personal Superannuation Schemes on Net Worth: Evidence from the Household Savings Survey," Treasury Working Paper Series 04/08, New Zealand Treasury.
    • Handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:04/08
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2018-02/twp04-08.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Choi, James J. & Laibson, David & Madrian, Brigitte C., 2004. "Plan Design and 401(K) Savings Outcomes," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 57(2), pages 275-298, June.
    2. Philip Cagan, 1965. "The Effect of Pension Plans on Aggregate Saving: Evidence from a Sample Survey," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number caga65-2.
    3. Orazio P. Attanasio & Agar Brugiavini, 2003. "Social Security and Households' Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 1075-1119.
    4. Dr Jon D. Stanford & Michael E. Drew, 2003. "A Review Of Australia's Compulsory Superannuation Scheme After A Decade," Discussion Papers Series 322, School of Economics, University of Queensland, Australia.
    5. Grant Scobie & John Gibson & Trinh Le, 2004. "Saving for Retirement: New Evidence for New Zealand," Treasury Working Paper Series 04/12, New Zealand Treasury.
    6. Hubbard, Robert Glenn, 1985. "Personal Taxation, Pension Wealth, and Portfolio Composition," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 67(1), pages 53-60, February.
    7. Munnell, Alicia H, 1976. "Private Pensions and Saving: New Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(5), pages 1013-1032, October.
    8. Bernheim, B. Douglas & Garrett, Daniel M., 2003. "The effects of financial education in the workplace: evidence from a survey of households," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(7-8), pages 1487-1519, August.
    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. Janice Burns & Maire Dwyer, 2007. "Households'attitudes to savings, investment and wealth," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 70, December.

    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. David A. Wise & Steven F. Venti, 1993. "The Wealth of Cohorts: Retirement Saving and the Changing Assets of Older Americans," NBER Working Papers 4600, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Marta Lachowska & Michał Myck, 2018. "The Effect of Public Pension Wealth on Saving and Expenditure," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 284-308, August.
    3. Tzu-Ting Yang, 2016. "The Effect of Workplace Pensions on Household Saving: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Taiwan," IEAS Working Paper : academic research 16-A013, Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
    4. Gary V. Engelhardt & Anil Kumar, 2007. "Employer Matching and 401(k) Saving: Evidence from the Health and Retirement Study," NBER Chapters, in: Public Policy and Retirement, Trans-Atlantic Public Economics Seminar (TAPES), pages 1920-1943, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Creedy, John & Gemmell, Norman & Scobie, Grant, 2015. "Pensions, savings and housing: A life-cycle framework with policy simulations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 346-357.
    6. Shapiro, Joel & Wu, Stephen, 2011. "Fatalism and savings," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(5), pages 645-651.
    7. Keenan Dworak-Fisher, 2011. "Matching Matters in 401(k) Plan Participation," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(4), pages 713-737, October.
    8. Bernheim, B. Douglas, 2002. "Taxation and saving," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 18, pages 1173-1249, Elsevier.
    9. Lehmann-Hasemeyer, Sibylle & Streb, Jochen, 2017. "Does Social Security crowd out Private Savings? The Case of Bismarck’s System of Social Insurance," IBF Paper Series 06-17, IBF – Institut für Bank- und Finanzgeschichte / Institute for Banking and Financial History, Frankfurt am Main.
    10. Yunju Nam & Elizabeth Hole & Michael Sherraden & Margaret M. Clancy, 2018. "Program Knowledge and Racial Disparities in Savings Outcomes in a Child Development Account Experiment," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 145-162, March.
    11. Louis Dicks-Mireaux & Mervyn A. King, 1982. "Pension Wealth and Household Savings: Tests of Robustness," NBER Working Papers 0962, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Gary V. Engelhardt & Anil Kumar, 2011. "Pensions and Household Wealth Accumulation," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 46(1), pages 203-236.
    13. Andersen, Henrik Yde, 2018. "Do tax incentives for saving in pension accounts cause debt accumulation? Evidence from Danish register data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 35-53.
    14. Pedro Tonon Zuanazzi & Adelar Fochezatto & Marcos Vinicio Wink Junior, 2018. "Social Security Reform and Personal Saving: Evidence from Brazil," International Journal of Economics and Finance, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 10(9), pages 1-26, September.
    15. Keenan Dworak-Fisher, 2008. "Encouraging Participation in 401(k) Plans: Reconsidering the Employer Match," Working Papers 420, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
    16. Creedy, John & Gemmell, Norman & Scobie, Grant, 2015. "Pensions, savings and housing: A life-cycle framework with policy simulations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 346-357.
    17. Ashok Thomas & Luca Spataro, 2016. "The Effects Of Pension Funds On Markets Performance: A Review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 1-33, February.
    18. Ashok Thomas & Luca Spataro, 2013. "Pension funds and Market Efficiency: A review," Discussion Papers 2013/164, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    19. Mitchell, O.S. & Piggott, J., 2016. "Workplace-Linked Pensions for an Aging Demographic," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 865-904, Elsevier.
    20. Nikolov, Plamen & Adelman, Alan, 2019. "Do private household transfers to the elderly respond to public pension benefits? Evidence from rural China," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Superannuation; Retirement; New Zealand; Net Worth: Saving; Household Behaviour;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies

    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:nzt:nztwps:04/08. 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: CSS I&T Web & Publishing, The Treasury (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tregvnz.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.