The effects of the introduction of tax incentives on retirement savings

This paper uses a Spanish panel of tax returns and another on household expenditure during the period 1985-1991 to examine the incidence of the introduction in 1988 of tax incentives to retirement savings on contributions to pension funds and on savings. We first identify the population cohorts who most used these incentives. Then we use data on the evolution of consumption of these cohorts to find that there is substantial heterogeneity in the response of household saving to tax incentives. Most contributions to pension funds are by older/high income individuals. While the overall amount of new saving we estimate is limited (at most 25 cents per euro contributed on average), saving responses differ substantially across age groups. In particular, we document very small consumption drops among the group of households between 56 and 65 years of age, the group that most actively contributed to the plan, while we find instead a larger decrease in consumption expenditures of the group of households between 46 and 55 years of age.