IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ulp/sbbeta/2016-38.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social security wealth and household asset holdings: new evidence from Belgium

Author

Listed:
  • Mathieu Lefebvre
  • Sergio Perelman

Abstract

It has been long suggested that public pension wealth may crowd out household savings. However, there remains controversy about the extent of this displacement effect. In this paper we use an original microsimulation model based on retrospective survey data collected through the third wave of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to estimate the displacement effect of public pension wealth on other wealth in Belgium. Combining this rich dataset with an accurate estimation of the individual pension entitlements allows us to circumvent some of the main measurement errors problems faced by previous studies. We estimate that an extra euro of public pension wealth is associated with about 14-25 cent decline in non-pension wealth.

Suggested Citation

  • Mathieu Lefebvre & Sergio Perelman, 2016. "Social security wealth and household asset holdings: new evidence from Belgium," Working Papers of BETA 2016-38, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2016-38
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://beta.u-strasbg.fr/WP/2016/2016-38.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. B. Douglas Bernheim & Daniel M. Garrett, 1996. "The Determinants and Consequences of Financial Education in the Workplace: Evidence from a Survey of Households," NBER Working Papers 5667, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Alessie, Rob & Angelini, Viola & van Santen, Peter, 2013. "Pension wealth and household savings in Europe: Evidence from SHARELIFE," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 308-328.
    3. Arnaud Dellis & Raphaël Desmet & Alain Jousten & Sergio Perelman, 2004. "Micro-Modeling of Retirement in Belgium," NBER Chapters, in: Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: Micro-Estimation, pages 41-98, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Thomas Blanchet & Yves Dubois & Anthony Marino & Muriel Roger, 2016. "Patrimoine privé et retraite en France," Revue française d'économie, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(1), pages 207-244.
    5. Jonathan Gruber & David A. Wise, 2004. "Social Security Programs and Retirement around the World: Micro-Estimation," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number grub04-1, March.
    6. Hubbard, R Glenn, 1986. "Pension Wealth and Individual Saving: Some New Evidence," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 18(2), pages 167-178, May.
    7. Dicks-Mireaux, Louis & King, Mervyn, 1984. "Pension wealth and household savings: Tests of robustness," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(1-2), pages 115-139.
    8. Orazio P. Attanasio & Agar Brugiavini, 2003. "Social Security and Households' Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 118(3), pages 1075-1119.
    9. 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.
    10. Sangho Kim & Rainer Klump, 2010. "The effects of public pensions on private wealth: evidence on the German savings puzzle," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(15), pages 1917-1926.
    11. William G. Gale, 1998. "The Effects of Pensions on Household Wealth: A Reevaluation of Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(4), pages 706-723, August.
    12. Alessie, R.J.M. & Kapteyn, A. & Klijn, F.E., 1997. "Mandatory pensions and personal savings in The Netherlands," Discussion Paper 1997-39, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    13. Jappelli, Tullio, 1995. "Does social security reduce the accumulation of private wealth? Evidence from Italian survey data," Ricerche Economiche, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 1-31, March.
    14. Orazio P. Attanasio & Susann Rohwedder, 2003. "Pension Wealth and Household Saving: Evidence from Pension Reforms in the United Kingdom," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1499-1521, December.
    15. 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.
    16. Michael Hurd & Pierre‐Carl Michaud & Susann Rohwedder, 2012. "The Displacement Effect of Public Pensions on the Accumulation of Financial Assets," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 33(1), pages 107-128, March.
    17. Dimitrios Christelis, 2011. "Imputation of Missing Data in Waves 1 and 2 of SHARE," CSEF Working Papers 278, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    18. Alain Jousten & Mathieu Lefebvre, 2013. "Retirement Incentives in Belgium: Estimations and Simulations Using SHARE Data," De Economist, Springer, vol. 161(3), pages 253-276, September.
    19. Feldstein, Martin S, 1974. "Social Security, Induced Retirement, and Aggregate Capital Accumulation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(5), pages 905-926, Sept./Oct.
    20. Laurence J. Kotlikoff, 1979. "Social Security and Equilibrium Capital Intensity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 93(2), pages 233-253.
    21. Ferdinand M. Vieider & Mathieu Lefebvre & Ranoua Bouchouicha & Thorsten Chmura & Rustamdjan Hakimov & Michal Krawczyk & Peter Martinsson, 2015. "Common Components Of Risk And Uncertainty Attitudes Across Contexts And Domains: Evidence From 30 Countries," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 421-452, June.
    22. Feldstein, Martin & Pellechio, Anthony, 1979. "Social Security and Household Wealth Accumulation: New Microeconometric Evidence," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 61(3), pages 361-368, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Alessie, Rob & Angelini, Viola & van Santen, Peter, 2013. "Pension wealth and household savings in Europe: Evidence from SHARELIFE," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 308-328.
    2. Alessie, R.J.M. & Angelini, V. & van Santen, P.C., 2012. "Pension wealth and household savings in Europe," Research Report 12012-EEF, University of Groningen, Research Institute SOM (Systems, Organisations and Management).
    3. repec:dgr:rugsom:12012-eef is not listed on IDEAS
    4. 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.
    5. Andreas Thiemann, 2016. "How Does Maternal Pension Wealth Affect Family Old-Age Savings in Germany?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1560, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    6. Anna d’Addio & Muriel Roger & Frédérique Savignac, 2019. "Pensions and Household Savings: Cross-Country Heterogeneity in Europe," Working papers 738, Banque de France.
    7. 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.
    8. Dillingh, Rik, 2016. "Empirical essays on behavioral economics and lifecycle decisions," Other publications TiSEM 0e2143e3-bd86-4302-90eb-e, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Esteban Garcia-Miralles & Jonathan M. Leganza, 2021. "Public Pensions and Private Savings," CEBI working paper series 21-06, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    10. 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.
    11. Pirmin Fessler & Martin Schürz, 2018. "Private Wealth Across European Countries: The Role of Income, Inheritance and the Welfare State," Journal of Human Development and Capabilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(4), pages 521-549, October.
    12. Klaus Kaier & Christoph Müller, 2015. "New figures on unfunded public pension entitlements across Europe: concept, results and applications," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 865-895, November.
    13. Lindeboom, Maarten & Montizaan, Raymond, 2020. "Disentangling retirement and savings responses," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    14. Blau, David M., 2011. "Pensions, Household Saving, and Welfare: A Dynamic Analysis," IZA Discussion Papers 5554, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    15. Bottazzi, Renata & Jappelli, Tullio & Padula, Mario, 2006. "Retirement expectations, pension reforms, and their impact on private wealth accumulation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(12), pages 2187-2212, December.
    16. Mauro Mastrogiacomo & Yue Li & Rik Dillingh, 2022. "The displacement effect of compulsory pension savings on private savings. Evidence from the Netherlands, using pension funds supervisory data," Working Papers 747, DNB.
    17. Peter van Santen, 2019. "Uncertain Pension Income and Household Saving," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 65(4), pages 908-929, December.
    18. Belloni, Michele & Brugiavini, Agar & Buia, Raluca E. & Carrino, Ludovico & Cavapozzi, Danilo & Orso, Cristina E. & Pasini, Giacomo, 2020. "What do we learn about redistribution effects of pension systems from internationally comparable measures of Social Security wealth?," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 19(4), pages 548-566, October.
    19. van Santen, Peter, 2016. "Uncertain pension income and household saving," Working Paper Series 330, Sveriges Riksbank (Central Bank of Sweden).
    20. José Luis Iparraguirre, 2020. "Economics and Ageing," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-030-29019-1, January.
    21. Clark, Robert L. & Mitchell, Olivia S., 2014. "How does retiree health insurance influence public sector employee saving?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 109-118.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social security; saving; microsimulation; crowding-out effect.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • J14 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of the Elderly; Economics of the Handicapped; Non-Labor Market Discrimination

    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:ulp:sbbeta:2016-38. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bestrfr.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.