While financial knowledge has been linked to improved financial behavior, there is little consensus on the value of financial education, in part because rigorous evaluation of various programs has yielded mixed results. However, given the heterogeneity of financial education programs in the...

Empirical analyses of the effects of public and private pensions on household saving impose strong assumptions in order to obtain a tractable empirical model: fixed retirement and pension claiming ages, no borrowing constraint, little or no uncertainty, and no institutional restrictions on...

This paper presents survey results on the incidence of IRA ownership in the United States and the activity of IRA-owning households. In mid-2020, 37 percent of US households owned individual retirement accounts (IRAs), most commonly traditional IRAs. More than eight in 10 IRA-owning households...

The regulation of private and public pension plans in the United States begins with the premise that employer-sponsored plans resemble traditional donative, or gift, trusts. Accordingly, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) famously “imports” major principles of...

PAYG and funding may and do coexist in social security systems. The proportions of this coexistence, however, are quite variable from country to country. The paper examines the US and a number of European countries, looking at both the present state and the foreseeable trends in future decades....

This paper presents survey results on the incidence of individual retirement account (IRA) ownership in the United States and the contribution, rollover, and withdrawal activity of IRA-owning households. In mid-2021, 37 percent of US households owned IRAs. More than eight in 10 IRA-owning...

The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation becomes the trustee for private defined benefit plans that have defaulted. The PBGC pays retirement benefits as provided by the plan and that are consistent with federal guidelines concerning the type and amounts of distributions. In response to a...

This paper presents survey results on the incidence of individual retirement account (IRA) ownership in the United States and the contribution, rollover, and withdrawal activity of IRA-owning households. IRAs play an important role in US households’ retirement saving: In mid-2022, more than...