Emails Prompt Employees to Save More for Retirement (Brief)

DOL Behavioral Interventions Final Project Brief

Publisher: Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research

Apr 30, 2017

Authors

Samia Amin, Greg Chojnacki, Irma Perez-Johnson, Matthew Darling, Aravind Moorthy, and Jaclyn Lefkowitz

Key Findings:

Low-cost, behaviorally informed emails increased the number of U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) employees saving at least 5 percent of their salary by 7.5 percentage points.
Emails raised the overall contribution rate by up to 0.4 percentage points, or approximately $11,500, over an employee’s lifetime.
Emails were not effective in causing non-contributors to start contributing a percentage of their salary to the Thrift Savings Plan.

This project brief summarizes findings from Mathematica's behavioral insights study conducted for the U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA).

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Publication (PDF)

Project

Behavioral Interventions for Labor-Related Programs

Funders

U.S. Department of Labor

Time Frame

2014-2017

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