Seminar: How effective are matching schemes in enticing low-income earners to save more
Associate Professor Marc Chan from the University of Melbourne will be offering research insights in his seminar ‘How effective are matching schemes in enticing low-income earners to save more? Evidence from a targeted national scheme’.
Faced with fiscal pressures from an aging population, western countries are encouraging a greater reliance on private pension schemes to support retirement. However, because of the progressive nature of most tax systems, there are concerns that the tax-favoured nature of these schemes is not enough to entice contributions that will afford low and middle-income earners a comfortable retirement. In response, many governments have introduced contribution matching schemes that are targeted at raising contributions of low and middle-income earners, but there is mixed and limited evidence on whether these are effective. In this study, we use longitudinally linked administrative superannuation data, exploiting plausibly exogenous changes in eligibility and matching rates over time, to measure the impacts of an Australian matching scheme between 2003 and 2017. We find that the scheme has had a modest take-up rate and that the extra retirement income from the government contribution induced a reduction in own contributions. Compared to studies to date, the fact that we do not find more positive results in such an accessible, simple and generous scheme, with arguably a more robust estimation strategy, calls into question the effectiveness of matching schemes in lifting the savings of low and middle-income earners.
Marc Chan is an associate professor of economics at the University of Melbourne. His main areas of research include labour economics, public economics, and applied econometrics.
CHE seminar series
At the Centre for Health Economics, we are working on running as many of our seminars as possible online while COVID-19 remains an obstacle to getting together. As we will be working with experts and colleagues in other parts of the world there will be some movement in the times and days that seminars run to take into account different time zones and availabilities. If you would like to be on our seminar email list, please be directly in contact by email to shannon.stanwell@monash.edu.
Hope to see you there!
Event Details
- Date:
- 27 May 2020 at 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
- Venue:
- This seminar will take place via Zoom - please email shannon.stanwell@monash.edu to register
- Categories:
- Health Economics
Description
Associate Professor Marc Chan from the University of Melbourne will be offering research insights in his seminar ‘How effective are matching schemes in enticing low-income earners to save more? Evidence from a targeted national scheme’.
Faced with fiscal pressures from an aging population, western countries are encouraging a greater reliance on private pension schemes to support retirement. However, because of the progressive nature of most tax systems, there are concerns that the tax-favoured nature of these schemes is not enough to entice contributions that will afford low and middle-income earners a comfortable retirement. In response, many governments have introduced contribution matching schemes that are targeted at raising contributions of low and middle-income earners, but there is mixed and limited evidence on whether these are effective. In this study, we use longitudinally linked administrative superannuation data, exploiting plausibly exogenous changes in eligibility and matching rates over time, to measure the impacts of an Australian matching scheme between 2003 and 2017. We find that the scheme has had a modest take-up rate and that the extra retirement income from the government contribution induced a reduction in own contributions. Compared to studies to date, the fact that we do not find more positive results in such an accessible, simple and generous scheme, with arguably a more robust estimation strategy, calls into question the effectiveness of matching schemes in lifting the savings of low and middle-income earners.
Marc Chan is an associate professor of economics at the University of Melbourne. His main areas of research include labour economics, public economics, and applied econometrics.
CHE seminar series
At the Centre for Health Economics, we are working on running as many of our seminars as possible online while COVID-19 remains an obstacle to getting together. As we will be working with experts and colleagues in other parts of the world there will be some movement in the times and days that seminars run to take into account different time zones and availabilities. If you would like to be on our seminar email list, please be directly in contact by email to shannon.stanwell@monash.edu.
Hope to see you there!