Journal article
The impacts of a large-scale financial education intervention on retirement saving behaviors and portfolio allocation: Evidence from pension fund data
E Ghafoori, E Ip, J Kabátek
Journal of Banking and Finance | ELSEVIER | Published : 2021
Abstract
We analyze the causal impact of a large-scale financial education intervention on retirement saving behaviors and asset allocation decisions. The studied intervention is a nationwide retirement seminar program that is administered by a major Australian pension fund. Making use of the variation in the timing of seminar invitations, we find that seminar attendance has large positive effects on a range of desirable behaviors. Over a span of two years, the seminars generate excess voluntary contributions worth 6 per cent of the attending members’ pension balances. Seminar attendees also become more likely to use sophisticated portfolio allocation strategies, lowering the risk of their asset hold..
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Grants
Awarded by University of Exeter
Funding Acknowledgements
Jan Kabatek gratefully acknowledges funding from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (Project ID CE20 0100025). The authors would like to thank Lisa Bruggen, Ralph van Ooijen, Marike Knoef, David Ribar, Arthur van Soest, Susan Thorp, the managing editor, the associate editor and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. The authors would also like to thank the employees of the pension fund who helped with extracting the data and provided further institutional information for the study. The study has ethics approval from the University of Exeter (reference: eU-EBS004067 v4.0).