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Retirement Contribution Rate Nudges and Plan Participation: Evidence from a Field Experiment

Jacob Goldin¹; Tatiana Homonoff²; Will Tucker-Ray³

¹ Stanford Law School, Stanford University, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA 94305 (e-mail: ) · ² Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, New York University, 295 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10010 (e-mail: ) · ³ White House Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, 1650 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20502, and ideas42 (e-mail: )

Simple interventions like changing the default or sending a short message can induce individuals to save more for retirement. However, messages that emphasize high savings rates may increase the amount that savings plan participants save while reducing the total number of plan participants. We study this possibility in the context of a field experiment designed to increase retirement savings by US military service-members. We find that service-members who received a message emphasizing a low contribution rate were more likely to participate in a savings plan than were service-members whose message emphasized a high contribution rate, or no rate at all.

DOI

10.1257/aer.p20171059

Volume

107 (5)

Pages

456-461

Language

en

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