Decision Making in Individual Account Pension Systems.

摘要

This dissertation studies different aspects of decision making in individual account pension systems. I use data from Chile, the pioneer country in adopting a fully-funded individual account pension system as the main source of retirement savings for workers.;The first chapter examines the relative importance of health and wealth for the retirement decision in the context of a mature individual account pension system. Overall, health factors seem to be the most important determinant of retirement in Chile, as opposed to recent research for the US that finds that wealth prevails as the main determinant of retirement. This result might be due to the fact that individual account pension systems are age neutral and do not provide real economic incentives for retirement. Besides contributing to knowledge about how pension system structure might affect retirement behavior, results of this research are useful for policymakers around the world considering the adoption of a fully-funded individual account pension system.;The second chapter investigates whether the child bonus policy included in the recent Chilean pension reform generated incentives for women to have children and whether it affected the timing of birth. Results suggest that the child bonus policy increases fertility preferences, but this effect cannot be confirmed for births. Effects on fertility preferences, however, vary for different groups of women. They seem to be stronger for single women, as well as for higher order births. The child bonus policy also seems to have shortened the time to a birth, especially for single women and first births, even though these effects are not statistically significant.;The third chapter investigates the role of financial literacy and pension system knowledge on the retirement savings investment choice of workers. I find that financial literacy and especially pension knowledge present a statistically significant and positive effect on the probability of making an active investment decision, but that only financial literacy affects the choice of investment fund itself. These results suggest that investing in financial and pension system education might be an important strategy for governments to motivate active investment choices and provide workers with tools to make appropriate investment decisions.