Prompts cause people to update their preference of when to take retirement and increase confidence in choice

Citation

Pulk K, Riitsalu L & Comerford DA (2025) Prompts cause people to update their preference of when to take retirement and increase confidence in choice. International Social Security Review, 78 (1), pp. 3-27. https://doi.org/10.1111/issr.12380

Abstract
The decision concerning when to take retirement involves many uncertain factors. When confronted with such high stakes and complex decisions, people might defer to defaults or norms instead of asking themselves which option best suits their own circumstances. We present a survey experiment to test whether prompting people to reflect on their personal situation, such as debt, health and skills alters a) when they choose to claim their pension and b) confidence in that choice. We asked 2,197 Estonians aged 50–64, if they were to make the decision, would they take an early retirement, a flexible pension, or continue to work until retirement age? The prompt caused a 50.9 per cent increase in the proportion of participants choosing to continue working – from 23.4 per cent in the control condition to 35.3 per cent in the prompted groups. Although we study retirement choices in Estonia, our results have a general implication – our data suggest that people take early retirement without first asking themselves fundamental questions about whether retiring at that age is best for them. A second implication is that a simple and scalable prompt can cause a shift in preference and increase people’s confidence in their choice, therefore serving as a signpost towards a considered retirement decision.

Keywords
retirement; early retirement; flexible retirement; benefit administration; survey; attitude; Estonia

Journal
International Social Security Review: Volume 78, Issue 1