Pension and savings in the spotlight
Due to increasing lifetime and (almost) constant retirement age we need to bust private savings. Yet, as Max van Lent shows it is a tough nut to crack. It is one thing to know that you should (and could) save more or even declare that you would. It's completely another thing actually to increase savings. T. Scott Findley shows that even if you make a rational decision, it is hard to not have a savings regret at age 65... Data, presented by Susann Rohwedder, shows that it is mostly due to income and health shock. Preferences play a less important role. Eric French argues that health spending and bequest are main drivers of saving after retirement. David Sturrock tries to pass some intuition behind annuity puzzle. If we save mostly due to risk (and regret mostly due to shock realization) why don't we buy insurance against that? The reason is that we perceive risk not consistent with the data. Long story short. On average, we are too pessimistic about our survival probabilities. If individual savings are so hard to handle in public pension system we trust. But, we need to make some changes to make them compatible with demographic structure. We show how to finance such changes, to get welfare gains and political support.
23/Jan/2019 - 25/Jan/2019
Leiden, The Netherlands