The effect of social security and other forms of government debt on national savings is one of the most widely debated … policy questions in economics today. Some estimates suggest that social security has reduced U.S. savings by almost forty … percent. This paper examines recent cross-section and time series empirical tests of the social security-savings question and …

Using 41 million observations on savings for the population of Denmark, we show that the impacts of retirement savings … policies on wealth accumulation depend on whether they change savings rates by active or passive choice. Subsidies for … retirement accounts, which rely upon individuals to take an action to raise savings, primarily induce individuals to shift assets …