Did You Really Save so Little for Your Retirement? An Analysis of Retirement Savings and Unconventional Retirement Accounts
36 Pages Posted: 21 Dec 2011
Date Written: December 16, 2011
Abstract
We use a confirmatory factor analysis to study the relation between the importance of a broad spectrum of saving motives, such as saving for retirement, and saving behavior. Survey data show that many respondents save for retirement in unconventional retirement accounts, such as investments in real estate. We show that finding the retirement motive important does not directly translate in additional retirement savings. We show that the annuity stream generated by conventional and unconventional accounts from age 65 onwards is small and that most savings are residual and are not being put aside for a specific motive. Also self-employed retirement savings are low, even though this group has generally no occupational pension.
Keywords: retirement savings, precautionary savings, factor analysis
JEL Classification: D12, D91, E21
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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