The Riester Scheme and Private Savings: An Empirical Analysis based on the German SOEP

Since 2002 the German government has promoted private retirement saving plans by means of special subsidies and tax incentives: the Riester scheme. This policy mainly targets low-income households. Using data from the German Socio-economic Panel, we scrutinize the impact of the Riester scheme on private savings. The introduction of the Riester scheme is treated as a natural experiment. Estimation results cast some doubts on the effectiveness of the Riester scheme and call for enhanced efforts to evaluate that policy.