Set It and Forget It? Financing Retirement in an Age of Defaults

Retirement savings abandonment is a rising concern connected to deﬁned contribution systems and default enrollment. We use tax data on Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) to establish that for a recent cohort, 0.4% of retirement-age individuals in total abandoned $ 66 million; the median abandoned account held $ 5,800. Data from state unclaimed property databases suggests that workplace deﬁned contribution plans are abandoned at a higher rate than IRAs. Regression discontinuity estimates show that certain accounts created by default policies are at higher risk of abandonment. helpful unclaimed property Wisconsin Alumni Research Fund for funding. All views own the funding views expressed this paper do oﬃcial U.S. of the Treasury, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, or the Federal Reserve