Trust and Retirement Preparedness: Evidence from Singapore

Trust is an essential component of the financial system, and distrust can undermine saving and economic growth. Accordingly, prior research has shown that survey responses to a question about ‘trust in people’ are associated with household willingness to invest in the stock market. Nevertheless, little is known about how trust shapes economic behaviors predictive of retirement preparedness. Our study draws on the Singapore Life Panel (SLP®), a high-frequency internet survey of people age 50-70, to assess how trust ties to older respondents’ (1) pension plan participation and withdrawals; (2) life, health and long-term care insurance purchases; and (3) stock market engagement. We show that the ‘trust in people’ question often used in prior studies is uncorrelated with household behaviors related to retirement preparedness. Nevertheless, trust in financial and public-sector representatives is positively associated with pension savings, investments, and insurance purchases. Financial literacy also has a consistent and important role in explaining who saves for retirement and other economic behaviors driving retirement readiness

Asset-Rich and Cash-Poor: Which Older Adults Value Reverse Mortgages?

Home equity represents a substantial share of retirement wealth for many older persons, particularly in Asia where national housing policies have encouraged homeownership. This paper explored the potential for reverse mortgages to help ‘asset-rich and cash-poor’ older Singaporeans unlock their home equity while ageing-in-place. The empirical analysis was based on a nationally representative survey of homeowners age 50+ in the 2018 Singapore Life Panel (N=6,258). Our analyses showed that the average older homeowner holds some 60% of total net wealth in housing equity, suggestive of high demand potential for reverse mortgage products. Nevertheless, actual interest in such products was much below potential demand. Only one in four older homeowners indicated interest in commercial reverse mortgages if these were to become available; a larger majority never heard of the financial product. Interest in reverse mortgages was positively associated with product awareness and self-rated product understanding. This implies that a critical step towards building consumer interest would be to enhance awareness of such products and simplify related contract terms. Having a mortgage, fewer children, financial literacy, and preparedness for retirement were also positively associated with interest level. These results have implications for targeted interventions to enhance consumer awareness and spur interest in reverse mortgages, especially in ageing societies where older people have built up substantial equity through the housing market over time

Functional Disabilities and Nursing Home Admittance

This paper examines how inability to perform activities of daily living relates to the risk of nursing home admission over older adults’ life courses. Using longitudinal data on persons over age 50 from the Health and Retirement Study, we show that aging one year boosts the probability of having two or more disabilities by 9 to 12 percent in a multivariate logistic model. Moreover, at least three-fifths of all 65-year-old men and three-quarters of women will experience disability levels during their remaining lifetimes severe enough to trigger nursing home admission. Our analysis also suggests that certain types of disability are more important than others in predicting nursing home admittance and use, which has implications for the design and benefit triggers for long-term care insurance programs

Longevity Risk and Annuities in Singapore

This chapter explores the current annuity market in Singapore and discusses the pros and cons of a proposal to mandate annuitization under the Singaporean Central Provident Fund (CPF). We evaluate the pricing of various annuity policies in order to assess whether plan participants might benefit from higher annuity returns per dollar premium and lower adverse selection costs under the new annuitization mandate. Our results indicate that private annuity providers currently offer good value-for-money annuities, with money’s worth values in line with those found for other developed countries. This has implications for proposals to mandate annuitization

Collective Investments for Pension Savings: Lessons from Singapore\u27s Central Provident Fund scheme

Singapore\u27s mandatory national defined contribution pension system permits participants to invest their retirement savings in a wide range of investment instruments if they wish, rather than leaving their savings in Central Provident Fund (CPF) accounts to earn interest rates by default. This article asks whether workers seeking to earn higher returns can expect to do better than the CPF-managed default, by moving their money into professionally managed unit trusts. We use historical data to investigate whether fund managers possess superior stock picking and market timing skills, as well as whether they exhibit persistence in performance and offer diversification benefits to participants. The evidence is mixed, which could explain why so few participants opt out of the CPF-run default fund

Cost Structures of Investment Offerings in Singapore’s Central Provident Fund

As policymakers seek to enhance the returns paid on participants’ investments in their retirement systems, much attention has focused on the Singaporean Central Provident Fund (CPF) and how professionally-managed unit trusts permitted under the CPFIS scheme fit into the system. This paper begins by indicating the investment choices made available to participants; we also summarize the various transaction costs associated with unit trust investments. Next, we examine the determinants of these costs and investigate which factors have a bearing on the cost structure of unit trusts. Our empirical results show that foreign ownership, active style of management, and equity/balanced funds are associated with higher expenses. The paper concludes with a discussion of policy options to reduce cost associated with CPFIS included unit trusts

Trust and retirement preparedness: Evidence from Singapore

Ministry of Education, Singapore under its Academic Research Funding Tier

Disaggregating Activities of Daily Living Limitations for Predicting Nursing Home Admission

Singapore Management University, Centre for Silver Security of the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economic

Financial Literacy and Financial Decision-making at Older Ages

How well older households manage their wealth holdings is an important determinant of their financial security during retirement, yet little is known about their financial decision-making and how this relates to their financial literacy. Our paper fills this gap by measuring financial literacy among older persons in the Singapore Life Panel and examining its association with timely credit card debt repayment, stock market participation, and age-based investment risk diversification. Most older respondents understand interest compounding and inflation, but fewer than half know about risk diversification. Almost all older credit card holders pay off their balances in a timely manner, but only 40% hold stocks; fewer than 18% with $1,000+ in assets hold portfolios consistent with age-appropriate investment glide paths. We further show that a one-unit higher financial literacy score is associated with a greater propensity to timely pay off credit card balances (1.5 ppts), to hold stock (8.3 ppts), and to follow an age-appropriate investment glide path (1.7 ppts)

A community-led intervention to build neighbourhood identification predicts better wellbeing following prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns

IntroductionA growing body of research supports the importance of social cohesion for population wellbeing. However, the majority of this research has been correlational, and rarely have interventions been evaluated.MethodWe conducted a two-timepoint study investigating the role of Neighbour Day, a grass-roots, community-led intervention that seeks to build social cohesion across the population. Among a sample of 843, 125 were Neighbour Day participants while the remainder were not.ResultsWe found that, compared to non-participants, Neighbour Day participants had significantly higher neighbourhood identification, experienced greater social cohesion, and had larger neighbourhood social networks. Between timepoints, the majority of the sample experienced prolonged lockdowns to prevent COVID-19 transmission, and so unsurprisingly, wellbeing declined and psychological distress increased. However, Neighbour Day participants were protected against these negative mental health effects of lockdown. These benefits of Neighbour Day participation were mediated via neighbourhood identification.DiscussionOverall, the findings speak to the promise of large-scale interventions to build social identity, particularly due to their capacity to build resilience and protect people’s wellbeing during times of collective change or crisis