Working Paper: NBER ID: w31398
Authors: Adam Bloomfield; Kyung Min Lee; Jay Philbrick; Sita Slavov
Abstract: We investigate how state “Auto-IRA” mandates affect firm offerings of employer-sponsored retirement plans (ESRPs). These policies require firms without ESRPs to facilitate automatic employee contributions to state-created individual retirement accounts (IRAs). We find that these policies increase an individual’s probability of working for a firm with an ESRP by 6-9 percent and of being included in the ESRP by 8-13 percent. At the firm level, these policies increase the probability of offering an ESRP by 7, the probability of establishing a new ESRP by 41-44 percent, and the number of ESRP participants by 6 percent.
Keywords: state retirement plan mandates; employer-sponsored retirement plans; automatic enrollment; individual retirement accounts
JEL Codes: D14; H75; J26
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| AutoIRA policies (G52) | probability of individuals working for firms offering ESRPs (J32) |
| AutoIRA policies (G52) | probability of participation in ESRPs (H55) |
| AutoIRA policies (G52) | number of ESRP participants at the average firm (L26) |