IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crr/issbrf/ib2012-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Can Employers Encourage Young Workers to Save for Retirement?

Author

Listed:
  • Nicole Votolato Montgomery
  • Lisa R. Szykman
  • Julie R. Agnew

Abstract

Workers under age 35 have the lowest 401(k) participation of any age group. Failing to save for retirement at a young age means missing out on compounded investment earnings that can substantially ease the burden of building a nest egg. The reasons young workers save less for retirement range from college loan repayments and low starting salaries to a desire to save for a house. Another reason is deeply rooted in psychology: when an event such as retirement is far from the future, people tend to distance themselves from it and think about it abstractly. In visual terms, it is more difficult to see the details of a photograph when one is far away - just as it is difficult for young adults to perceive old age. It will become more concrete only as they move closer. For young workers, then, retirement security lacks the urgency older workers feel. This brief reflects preliminary results from research positing that young adults' distance to retirement may discourage them from saving, and it tests what types of communication tactics might be most effective in promoting saving.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicole Votolato Montgomery & Lisa R. Szykman & Julie R. Agnew, 2012. "How Can Employers Encourage Young Workers to Save for Retirement?," Issues in Brief ib2012-7, Center for Retirement Research, revised Mar 2012.
    • Handle: RePEc:crr:issbrf:ib2012-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://crr.bc.edu/briefs/how-can-employers-encourage-young-workers-to-save-for-retirement/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Youngkyun Park, 2017. "The Influence of Plan Demographics on Contribution Behavior of 401(k) Participants," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 20(1), pages 7-35, March.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:crr:issbrf:ib2012-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Amy Grzybowski or Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/crrbcus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.