Document Type
Working Paper
Date of this Version
5-2022
Abstract
One of the most important financial decisions that pension participants make concerns how they access their pension assets when they terminate employment with their plan sponsor. Their choices depend both on own preferences and the options offered by their retirement plan. This paper examines both past and future pension withdrawal choices for those with defined benefit and defined contribution pensions, separately. Our data are drawn from a set of pension distribution questions we fielded in the Understanding American Study. Results show significant differences in distribution choices based on the type of retirement plan, with individuals covered by defined benefit plans significantly more likely to select annuities compared to similar employees covered by defined contribution plans. We also find differences in how higher annual income affects annuity choices based on coverage by DB plans. Individuals with lower levels of financial literacy and lower annual income have less knowledge of basic pension characteristics.
Keywords
Pensions, distribution choices, financial literacy
Working Paper Number
WP2022-12
Disclosure
This research was performed pursuant to a grant from the Institute of Consumer Money Management; the authors also acknowledge support from the Pension Research Council/Boettner Center at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Copyright/Permission Statement
Any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the authors and do not represent the opinions or policy any institutions with which the authors are affiliated. ©2022 Clark and Mitchell. All rights reserved.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank without implicating Patrick Royal and Yong Yu for their careful and invaluable research assistance on the project, and John Beshears, Jeff Brown, John Laitner, and Susann Rohwedder for helpful comments. This project is part of the NBER Household Finance and Aging programs.
Date Posted: 03 June 2022