Nothing Special   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nzt/nztwps/04-12.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Saving for Retirement: New Evidence for New Zealand

Author

Listed:
Abstract
There is an on-going debate about the level of savings in New Zealand. A fundamental question pervades the debate: namely, are we saving enough? This question arises at two levels: for the economy as a whole and for individual households. At the macroeconomic level, the concern is whether our aggregate level of saving as a nation is "adequate". At the micro level, the same question arises in relation to the saving for retirement: are New Zealanders adequately preparing for retirement? This paper addresses the second of these questions. It develops a model of retirement wealth accumulation based on the findings from the Household Savings Survey. The evidence we present, tentative though it is, does suggest that there may not be widespread undersaving for retirement. The results are consistent with overseas findings. We have chosen conservative assumptions: excluding equity in the primary residence from estimates of retirement wealth, providing for full survivor benefits and assuming that consumption spending would be maintained at pre-retirement levels throughout retirement rather than the typical pattern of falling consumption spending as people age. It must be stressed that there is limited information about the rate at which individuals are actually saving, making it difficult to establish a solid benchmark against which to measure adequacy. We have used the Household Economic Survey as a basis for estimating actual saving rates for different age groups. The estimates are affected by definitions of consumption, in particular how the expenditure on durables is treated. We conduct sensitivity tests where durables are both included and excluded as an item of current consumption. Typically we find that the actual saving rates do in fact exceed the rates needed for maintaining living standards in retirement. This reinforces our tentative conclusion that there is no apparent gross under-saving for retirement especially in the older age cohorts. The results apply to broad groups within which there will be a distribution of people some of whom would likely not be saving at a rate to maintain their real standard of living in retirement. The results in no way imply that every individual is saving “adequately”. While we present results for younger age cohorts, the fact they still have many years to retirement implies that estimates made today inevitably carry much wider margins of error. More unequivocal results must await better data and methodologies; improved measures of household saving levels, and the application of micro-simulation models which are more suited to capturing uncertainty about health status, employment, incomes and life expectancies will improve our understanding of household saving behaviour. New Zealand superannuation (NZS) provides the floor under the income for the lowest 40 percent of the income distribution, and for many in this group additional saving for retirement would not be a preferred strategy, assuming they were to be aiming to smooth their consumption over the life cycle. In other words our finding that there is no strong evidence of widespread under-saving is not inconsistent with a significant share of individuals not saving for retirement. This follows from the critical role played by NZS in providing those on low incomes with a standard of living in retirement which matched or exceeds that which their pre-retirement incomes can support. For these people the issue is the level of income rather than their level of saving.

Suggested Citation

  • Grant Scobie & John Gibson & Trinh Le, 2004. "Saving for Retirement: New Evidence for New Zealand," Treasury Working Paper Series 04/12, New Zealand Treasury.
    • Handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:04/12
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2007-09/twp04-12.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. B. Douglas Bernheim, 2000. "How Much Should Americans Be Saving for Retirement?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(2), pages 288-292, May.
    2. Ross Guest & Grant Scobie & John Bryant, 2003. "Population Ageing in New Zealand: The Impact on Living Standards and the Optimal Rate of Saving with a Flexible Real Exchange Rate," Treasury Working Paper Series 03/34, New Zealand Treasury.
    3. Ross Guest & John Bryant & Grant Scobie, 2003. "Population Ageing In New Zealand: Implications for Living Standards and the Optimal Rate of Saving," Treasury Working Paper Series 03/10, New Zealand Treasury.
    4. Orazio P. Attanasio & Agar Brugiavini, 2003. "Social Security and Households' Saving," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 1075-1119.
    5. Steven F. Venti & David A. Wise, 2001. "Choice, Chance, and Wealth Dispersion at Retirement," NBER Chapters, in: Aging Issues in the United States and Japan, pages 25-64, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. John Karl Scholz & Ananth Seshadri & Surachai Khitatrakun, 2006. "Are Americans Saving "Optimally" for Retirement?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(4), pages 607-643, August.
    7. Orazio P. Attanasio & Susann Rohwedder, 2003. "Pension Wealth and Household Saving: Evidence from Pension Reforms in the United Kingdom," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(5), pages 1499-1521, December.
    8. John Gibson & Grant Scobie, 2001. "A cohort analysis of household income, consumption and saving," New Zealand Economic Papers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(2), pages 196-216.
    9. Clive Thorp & Bun Ung, 2001. "Recent trends in household financial assets and liabilities," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 64, June.
    10. Eric M. Engen & William G. Gale & Cori E. Uccello, 2004. "Lifetime Earnings, Social Security Benefits, and the Adequacy of Retirement Wealth Accumulation," Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College wp2004-10, Center for Retirement Research, revised Apr 2004.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Grant M Scobie & Trinh Le, 2004. "The Impact of Workplace and Personal Superannuation Schemes on Net Worth: Evidence from the Household Savings Survey," Treasury Working Paper Series 04/08, New Zealand Treasury.
    2. Janice Burns & Maire Dwyer, 2007. "Households'attitudes to savings, investment and wealth," Reserve Bank of New Zealand Bulletin, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, vol. 70, December.
    3. Susan St. John, 2007. "Farewell to Tax Neutrality: The Implications for an Aging Population," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 18(1), pages 27-52, November.
    4. World Bank, 2014. "Poland : Saving for Growth and Prosperous Aging," World Bank Publications - Reports 20441, The World Bank Group.
    5. Creedy, John & Gemmell, Norman & Scobie, Grant, 2015. "Pensions, savings and housing: A life-cycle framework with policy simulations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 346-357.
    6. Mark van Zijll de Jong & Grant M. Scobie, 2006. "Housing: An Analysis of Ownership and Investment Based on the Household Savings Survey," Treasury Working Paper Series 06/07, New Zealand Treasury.
    7. Grant M. Scobie & Katherine Henderson, 2009. "Saving Rates of New Zealanders: A Net Wealth Approach," Treasury Working Paper Series 09/04, New Zealand Treasury.
    8. James Obben & Monique Waayer, 2011. "New Zealand's old‐age pension scheme and household saving," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 38(9), pages 767-788, August.
    9. Creedy, John & Gemmell, Norman & Scobie, Grant, 2015. "Pensions, savings and housing: A life-cycle framework with policy simulations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 346-357.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Blau, David M., 2011. "Pensions, Household Saving, and Welfare: A Dynamic Analysis," IZA Discussion Papers 5554, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Creedy, John & Gemmell, Norman & Scobie, Grant, 2015. "Pensions, savings and housing: A life-cycle framework with policy simulations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 346-357.
    3. Fang Yang, 2005. "Accounting for the heterogeneity in retirement wealth," Working Papers 638, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    4. James MacGee & Jie Zhou, 2010. "Private Pensions, Retirement Wealth and Lifetime Earnings," University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute Working Papers 20102, University of Western Ontario, Economic Policy Research Institute.
    5. Creedy, John & Gemmell, Norman & Scobie, Grant, 2015. "Pensions, savings and housing: A life-cycle framework with policy simulations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 346-357.
    6. Armel Ngami & Thomas Seegmuller, 2021. "Pollution and growth: The role of pension in the efficiency of health and environmental policies," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 17(4), pages 390-415, December.
    7. Talosaga Talosaga & Mark Vink, 2014. "The Effect of Public Pension Eligibility Age on Household Saving: Evidence from a New Zealand Natural Experiment," Treasury Working Paper Series 14/21, New Zealand Treasury.
    8. Etgeton, Stefan & Fischer, Björn & Ye, Han, 2023. "The effect of increasing retirement age on households’ savings and consumption expenditure," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    9. Madeira, Carlos, 2021. "The long term impact of Chilean policy reforms on savings and pensions," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 19(C).
    10. José Luis Iparraguirre, 2020. "Economics and Ageing," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-030-29019-1, February.
    11. Emma Gorman & Grant M Scobie & Yongjoon Paek, 2013. "Measuring Saving Rates in New Zealand: An Update," Treasury Working Paper Series 13/04, New Zealand Treasury.
    12. Antoine BozioBy & Carl Emmerson & Cormac O’Dea & Gemma Tetlow, 2017. "Do the rich save more? Evidence from linked survey and administrative data," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(4), pages 1101-1119.
    13. Marcela Parada-Contzen, 2020. "Crowding-out in savings decisions, portfolio default adoption and home ownership: evidence from the Chilean retirement system," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 18(2), pages 543-569, June.
    14. Annamaria Lusardi & Pierre-Carl Michaud & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2017. "Optimal Financial Knowledge and Wealth Inequality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(2), pages 431-477.
    15. Serena Yu, 2016. "Retiree Welfare and the 2009 Pension Increase: Impacts from an Australian Experiment," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 92(296), pages 67-80, March.
    16. Luigi Guiso & Tullio Jappelli & Mario Padula, 2009. "Pension Risk, Retirement Saving and Insurance," CSEF Working Papers 223, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    17. Binswanger, Johannes & Schunk, Daniel, 2012. "What is an adequate standard of living during Retirement?," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 203-222, April.
    18. Hui He & Lei Ning & Dongming Zhu, 2019. "The Impact of Rapid Aging and Pension Reform on Savings and the Labor Supply," IMF Working Papers 2019/061, International Monetary Fund.
    19. De Nardi, Mariacristina & Yang, Fang, 2014. "Bequests and heterogeneity in retirement wealth," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 182-196.
    20. Anna d’Addio & Muriel Roger & Frédérique Savignac, 2019. "Pensions and Household Savings: Cross-Country Heterogeneity in Europe," Working papers 738, Banque de France.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Savings; household net wealth; retirement; life cycle; New Zealand;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nzt:nztwps:04/12. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CSS I&T Web & Publishing, The Treasury (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/tregvnz.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.