The Behavioural Insights Team have
a new blogpost on defaults &
pension policy.
"The past year has seen one
of the biggest changes to pension schemes in recent times. Starting with the
largest employers, workers are now being automatically enrolled in a scheme
when they join a company. In other words, now people have to make a decision to
leave their employer’s scheme, rather than to join it.
When it was first
considered, this policy was seen as a trailblazer – and a test-bed – for the
use of behavioural economics in government. It offered a clear example of how
simply changing the default option could make it easier for people to save for
the future. However, although there is strong experimental evidence behind this
policy, there has been no indication of whether it works in the real world –
until now.
Last month saw the release
of the figures from the first year of auto-enrolment, covering 1.9m workers in
large companies. They show that the
opt-out rate was just 9%, much lower than many people had predicted. As a
result, the participation rate rose from 36% to 71% in those companies who
previously required employees to make an active choice.
This means that 400,000 more
people are now enrolled in a pension scheme so far.
Given that default options
are present in most policies, we’re looking to build on this result in our work
with other departments."
In line with previous research on the power of defaults to change pension behaviour (Madrian & Shea, Benartzi & Thaler, Choi et al.), the shift has had an enormous impact. What is maybe surprisingly here is the 35 percentage point increase (from 36% to 71%) in participation among employees who had to make an active choice regarding participation before the change. Active choices are often considered as an useful alternative to more forceful nudges but they don't appear to have been very effective here.
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