Old-Age Provision and Savings Behavior

This research unit deals with the implications of population aging on the sustainability and incentive structure of social security systems, including old age, health and long-term care insurance, and its interactions with saving behavior. Understanding savings behavior is crucial in order to investigate the potential role of private pension provision and evaluate the consequences of a transition towards partially funded social security systems.
Specifically, this research unit tries to understand the implications of incentive effects on individual saving and retirement decisions. It investigates how and why households save, and how that is linked to private and public transfers between generations. It asks questions such as: Are alternative social security reforms sustainable? How will different population groups be affected by reforms? What are the implications of the recent transition to a multi-pillar model of financing social security?
This unit will make use of several specially designed simulation models including population and labor force projections. Moreover, this research group designs and conducts a longitudinal survey on saving behavior (SAVE) in cooperation with Infratest. This study is integrated into the Sonderforschungsbereichs (SFB) 504 on Behavioral Economics at the University of Mannheim.

Members of this research unit:

• Dr. Martin Gasche (FB-Leiter)
• Marlene Haupt, M.A.
• Dipl. Vw. Sebastian Kluth
• Johannes Rausch

Ongoing projects:

Completed Projects: