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Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Retirement Outreach among Low-to-Middle Income Workers

Last registered on February 27, 2023
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Retirement Outreach among Low-to-Middle Income Workers
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0010819
Initial registration date
February 21, 2023

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
February 27, 2023, 9:35 AM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
United States of America
Region

Primary Investigator

Name
Angelino Viceisza
Affiliation
Spelman College
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Luisa Blanco
PI Affiliation
Pepperdine University
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Additional Trial Information

Status
In development
Start date
2023-02-22
End date
2023-10-31
Keywords
Finance & Microfinance, Labor, Other
Additional Keywords
Retirement, Household Finance, Race and Ethnicity
JEL code(s)
D14, G5, J15, J26
Secondary IDs
Prior work
This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.
Abstract
This project’s primary goal is to design and pilot outreach programs intended to improve retirement knowledge and preparedness among low to moderate income workers. Comparisons will be drawn across Black, Hispanic, and White workers.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Blanco, Luisa and Angelino Viceisza. 2023. "Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Retirement Outreach among Low-to-Middle Income Workers." AEA RCT Registry. February 27. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.10819-1.0
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
This project’s primary goal is to design and pilot a digital outreach program/intervention intended to improve retirement knowledge and preparedness among low to moderate income (LMI) Black and Hispanic workers. The precise details of the intervention and experimental design will depend on findings from a screening survey and an extensive literature review (e.g., Viceisza et al., NBER Working Paper 30456, 2022). Those details will be filed as an update to this initial submission.
Intervention Start Date
2023-04-01
Intervention End Date
2023-06-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
The primary outcomes as of now are likely to be (1) retirement knowledge as measured by the Retirement Knowledge Scale/RKS (Blanco et al. 2020) and (2) willingness to open/invest in a retirement account. However, this could change based on a findings from the screening survey.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
The RKS scale measures three important areas related to retirement knowledge and preparedness: 1. Reflection about retirement plans (questions 1 and 2); 2. Engagement with information related to financial planning for retirement (questions 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7); and 3. Evaluation of retirement preparedness (questions 8, 9 and 10). RKS items are coded lower (higher) for those answers that represent low (high) levels of reflection, engagement, and evaluation of retirement preparedness. We transform these responses linearly to a 0-100 possible range, assigning 0 for 1, 33.3333 for 2, 66.6666 for 3 and 100 for 4. We will use the average of the item responses such that the RKS scales also have a 0-100 possible range. Further details are discussed in https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4305160.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
The secondary outcomes as of now are likely to be self-reported (1) retirement account ownership, (2) balances in such accounts, and (3) familiarity with and usefulness of information provided about retirement preparedness. The outcomes could also change based on findings from the screening survey.
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
Subjects will be randomly assigned to retirement outreach treatments relative to a control group. The exact nature of the treatments and experimental design will depend on the screening survey and feasibility of execution by the implementing partner.
Experimental Design Details
Tentatively, the experiment will proceed as follows. The conditions will be revised/finalized in consultation with the implementing partner and based on a screening survey.

First, a screening survey will be fielded to identify (A) strata of eligible subjects (for example, those who have not started to plan for retirement versus those who have), (B) their reasons for falling within these strata (for example, their reason for being in that stage of retirement planning), and (C) other relevant types of heterogeneity.

Second, subjects will randomly be assigned to one of the following conditions:

(i) a treatment group that is exposed to an outreach intervention in which they are presented with retirement preparedness materials such as the mySocialSecurity statement and/or a retirement calculator;

(ii) a treatment group that is exposed to the above plus (possibly hypothetical) “house money” funds (i.e., funds provided by the researchers, with varying stakes) which can be partitioned across (1) a retirement account, (2) a standard savings account, or (3) “cash” (a gift card). The allocation can be however they want, for example, they can choose to place all the funds in only one of these modes. The stakes of the house money might also be randomly varied;

(iii) a control group that will only complete pre- and post-surveys. At most, this control group will receive a placebo treatment.

Third, a random subset of subjects will receive a follow-up mailing or email ("nudge") with additional information about retirement planning.
Randomization Method
The randomization will be done by the implementing partner's algorithm.
Randomization Unit
Individual.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
Not clustered.
Sample size: planned number of observations
300-900 individuals.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
100-300 individuals in control, 100-300 individuals in the first treatment, 100-300 individuals in the second treatment.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
This will be conducted once we settle on the final set of main outcomes based on the screening survey.
Supporting Documents and Materials

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IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Spelman College Institutional Review Board
IRB Approval Date
2023-02-21
IRB Approval Number
767A97
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials