| Field | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Field Trial Title | Before Does matching contributions incentivize informal workers to participate in retirement saving plans and to contribute to them? A randomized evaluation in Peru | After Do Matching Contributions incentivize informal workers to participate in retirement saving plans? A Randomized Evaluation in Peru |
| Field Trial Status | Before in_development | After on_going |
| Field Abstract | Before The project analyzes whether the matching defined contribution (MDC) scheme is an effective incentive to increase take-up rates and contributions in retirement saving plans. The study focusses on workers from small firms in the Metropolitan area in Lima, Peru, and our intervention involves transferring funds into workers’ pension accounts, conditional on their own contributions. The research proposes three pension plans: 100%, 50%, and 0% MDC (subject to a maximum amount) for six months. These products are offered to self-employed workers not enrolled in the pension system. We are interested in evaluating the take-up affiliation rate and contribution rates. Additionally, we analyze if the MDC increases retirement savings among the poor or just displaces non-retirement savings. | After This field experiment analyzes whether a Matching Defined Contribution (MDC) scheme is an effective incentive to increase enrollment and contributions in retirement saving plans. Our intervention involves transferring funds into workers’ pension funds, conditional on their own contributions. The research proposes three pension plans: 100%, 50%, and 0% MDC (subject to a maximum amount) for six months. These plans are offered to informal workers from micro firms located in the city of Lima, Peru, who were not previously enrolled in the pension system. |
| Field Trial Start Date | Before March 01, 2018 | After December 05, 2017 |
| Field Trial End Date | Before August 31, 2020 | After March 31, 2021 |
| Field Last Published | Before November 22, 2019 11:11 AM | After June 04, 2020 03:26 PM |
| Field Intervention (Public) | Before The proposed intervention is focused on workers of small firms not enrolled in the pension system. The scheme of the intervention's protocol is: (i) All workers are visited by sales agents who bring information about the pension system and future saving benefits. (ii) Workers decide if they want to participate and to become affiliated with the Pension Fund. (iii) Depending on the treatment group, workers receive a matching defined contribution (MDC) for every monthly contribution they had done, controls do not receive any matching (iv). During the six months of treatment, all workers receive WhatsApp reminders (treated and control groups). | After The MDC scheme is applied between three different groups of workers, two of them receive a monthly matching incentive of 100% (full match) or 50% (partial match), and a third one, which is the control group, receives 0% (no match). We match 100% of the contribution or 50% of it up to a monthly maximum amount of USD 42 and six months after enrollment. All groups receive detailed information about the importance of saving for retirement, the peruvian pension system and the benefits of enrolling to the Private Pension System. Since all three groups receive the same kind of information, we are able to estimate the effect of the matching incentive. |
| Field Intervention Start Date | Before October 30, 2018 | After April 24, 2018 |
| Field Intervention End Date | Before January 30, 2020 | After September 14, 2020 |
| Field Primary Outcomes (End Points) | Before 1) The enrollment rate of workers to the Pension Fund. 2) The contribution rate of new affiliates to thePension Fund. | After 1) Enrollment to the Pension Fund 2) Contribution to the Pension Fund. |
| Field Primary Outcomes (Explanation) | Before There are two principal outcomes of interest: 1) The enrollment rate of workers to the Pension Fund: This outcome is directly obtained when a worker decides to affiliate to his Pension Fund; we confirm this information when the Pension Fund verifies worker affiliation in his system. 2) The contribution rate of new affiliates to the Pension Fund: The Pension Fund strictly provides this variable; we are informed about workers who have contributed and how much they had. This rate varies with the new flow of affiliates for each month. An additional advantage of our study is that we can verify quickly the outcomes and provide a short-term analysis. | After 1) Enrollment: This is a dummy variable which indicates whether the worker was enrolled to the pension fund. This enrollment can occur right after the sales agent gives the worker the information and explains the saving plan and incentives, or later. 2) Contribution: We have two definitions for this outcome. The first is a dummy variable that indicates if the worker contributed at least once during the treatment period, while the other is a continuous variable indicating the total amount of contributions made by the worker. |
| Field Experimental Design (Public) | Before Each firm is randomly assigned to three groups, two treatment groups, and one control group. All workers from a firm inherit the firm's random treatment. The first treatment group receives information on pension savings and a 100% MDC (subject to a maximum amount) for six months. The second treatment group receives information and a 50% MDC (subject to a maximum amount) for the same period of time. The control group does not get any MDC, but they receive information about how important is to save for retirement. | After Our unit of analysis are the workers from the micro firms located in Lima. The unit of randomization is the micro firm, since it was the only mean we could use to reach the worker. These firms need to be registered in two administrative databases. After visiting the firms, we found that an important number of them could not be located or were closed, so we excluded them from the analysis. We also had to keep only workers who were not previously enrolled in the pension system. Therefore, our final sample comprises 3,038 workers from 2,770 micro firms and it is representative of the informal workers from micro firms located in Lima, who were not previously enrolled in any pension system. Treatment assignment is as follows: 912 workers in the control group, 1,063 in the 50% matching group and 1,063 in the 100% matching group. |
| Field Randomization Method | Before Stratified Randomization | After Stratified Randomization done in office by a computer. |
| Field Planned Number of Clusters | Before 2,181 small firms | After 2,770 micro firms |
| Field Planned Number of Observations | Before 3,969 workers | After 3,038 workers |
| Field Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms | Before 727 firms | After 835 micro firms control, and 968 micro firms in the 50% matching group and 967 micro firms in the 100% matching group. |
| Field Power calculation: Minimum Detectable Effect Size for Main Outcomes | Before We expect the intervention will get a Minimum Detectable Effect of 0.03612 for contribution rate. In particular, this MDE is associated with an overall percentage variance of 14% between treatment and control groups. The following assumptions are up to date based on our baseline collected in the preliminary pilot from May– June 2018. We are using 1.82 observations per cluster, an inter-cluster correlation of 0.17, and a standard deviation of 0.227. Finally, for these calculations, we assume a significance level of 0.05 and a power of 0.8. | After We expect that our intervention will have a Minimum Detectable Effect of 0.03612 percentage points on the probability to contribute. This MDE is associated with an overall percentage variance of 14% between treatment and control groups. We assume a significance level of 0.05 and a power of 0.8. |
| Field Additional Keyword(s) | Before Pension System, Financial Inclusion | After Retirement Savings, Matching Defined Contributions, Labor Informality |
| Field Keyword(s) | Before Finance, Labor, Other, Welfare | After Finance, Labor, Other |
| Field Intervention (Hidden) | Before The project uses the database from the “Directory of Small and Micro firms in Lima” provided by the "National Institute of Statistics and Informatics". IPA-Peru and researchers randomly select 2,181 small firms from Lima (approximately 3,969 workers). Based on that sample, the baseline survey is conducted by IPA-Peru to collect information about workers' characteristics and to obtain their consent to participate in the experiment. The study focuses exclusively on individuals not affiliated with the pension system, we assure their non-affiliated status using official sources to filter them out. The intervention consists: (i) All workers are visited by sales agents who bring information about the pension system and future saving benefits. (ii) Workers decide if they want to participate and to become affiliated with the Pension Fund. (iii) Depending on the treatment group, workers receive a matching defined contribution (MDC) for every monthly contribution they had done, controls do not receive any matching (iv). During the six months of treatment, all workers receive WhatsApp reminders (treated and control groups). | After For workers who are not previously enrolled in the pension system, the intervention proceeds as follows. First, they are visited in their job (or in the place where the worker prefers) by a sales agent who gives them information and offers enrollment. On the second working day of the month following the enrollment, workers receive a Whatsapp message which communicates them that they are enabled to save into their pension fund, and remind them how to save. On the first Monday of each month, all enrolled workers receive another message, which reminds them of saving and the matching incentive, for the case of treated workers. If the worker decides to contribute to her pension fund, she receives another message five days after the matching is deposited, which lets her know that the incentive has already been transferred to her account (if she is a control group worker, the message only thanks her for saving). In the case of workers who do not contribute, they receive a message next month that reminds them that they are not taking advantage of the matching incentive (for treated workers) or that they should be saving for retirement (for control workers). |
| Field Public analysis plan | Before No | After Yes |
| Field Public locations | Before No | After Yes |
| Field | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Field Document | Before |
After
2020-06-03_PAP_Matching_Contributions.pdf
MD5:
93d3ac0a8fbb55ead7700ea29507c4e1
SHA1:
effdb5ff0943b3a9466d558d569915d3a40d6d3a
|
| Field Title | Before | After Pre-Analysis Plan Matching Contributions |