Between goals and expectations: Essays on pensions and retirement

This thesis looks at subjective ideas of individuals that are relevant to their retirement. The first chapter focuses on the relationship between expectations of the replacement rate of income at retirement and satisfaction with various aspects of one’s pension arrangements, such as the age at which one can retire and the level of pension income. Chapter two analyzes those same expectations and focuses on the way survey respondents answer such questions that ask them to think in terms of probabilities. For instance, respondents may round probabilities to the nearest multiple of five or ten percent. The third chapter investigates expectations held by individuals regarding their life expectancy. In particular, it proposes robust ways to analyze expectations that can take rounding into account. The penultimate chapter analyzes expenditure goals after retirement and combines those with forecasted pensions and current savings to assess whether the Dutch are sufficiently prepared to retire by their own standards. Finally, chapter five shows that participation in the household survey that elicited consumption goals after retirement changed the extent to which households saved during the year of the survey.