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Promoting public retirement savings accounts during tax filing: evidence from field experiments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2021

Stephen Roll Open the ORCID record for Stephen Roll [Opens in a new window] ,
Sam Bufe Open the ORCID record for Sam Bufe [Opens in a new window] ,
Olga Kondratjeva  and
Michal Grinstein-Weiss
Stephen Roll
Affiliation:
Brown School, Washington University in Saint Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
Sam Bufe*
Affiliation:
Social Policy Institute, Washington University in Saint Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
Olga Kondratjeva
Affiliation:
Social Policy Institute, Washington University in Saint Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
Michal Grinstein-Weiss
Affiliation:
Brown School, Washington University in Saint Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: sambufe@wustl.edu
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Abstract

In 2015, the U.S. Treasury Department launched myRA, a no-fee retirement account designed for people who lacked employer-sponsored retirement options. We report findings from two behavioral field experiments intended to motivate interest in using the tax refund to open and fund myRAs directly through the tax-filing process. These experiments, administered to more than 100,000 low-income tax filers in 2016, embedded persuasive messages in emails sent to filers and directly within online tax-filing software. We find that interest in myRA was generally very low, although interest and enrollment intentions varied depending on the framing of the program's benefits.

Keywords

Retirement savingsbehavioral economicstax refundlow-incomefield experimentD14D15I30
Type
Article
Information
Journal of Pension Economics & Finance , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 2023 , pp. 88 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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