TY  - JOUR
AU  - Liebman,Jeffrey B.
AU  - Luttmer,Erzo F.P.
TI  - Would People Behave Differently If They Better Understood Social Security? Evidence From a Field Experiment
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 17287
PY  - 2011
Y2  - August 2011
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17287
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w17287.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jeffrey B. Liebman
John F. Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
79 JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-8518
Fax: 617/496-9053
E-Mail: jeffrey_liebman@harvard.edu

Erzo F.P. Luttmer
6106 Rockefeller Center, Room 305
Department of Economics
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755
Tel: 603/646-6479
E-Mail: Erzo.FP.Luttmer@Dartmouth.Edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2011-12-01
AB  - This paper presents the results of a field experiment in which a sample of older workers was randomized between a treatment group that was given information about key Social Security provisions and a control group that was not. The experiment was designed to examine whether it is possible to affect individual behavior using a relatively inexpensive informational intervention about the provisions of a public program and to explore the mechanisms underlying the behavior change. We find that our relatively mild intervention (sending an informational brochure and an invitation to a web-tutorial) increased labor force participation one year later by 4 percentage points relative to the control group mean of 74 percent and that this effect is driven by a 7.2 percentage point increase among female subjects. In addition to affecting actual labor supply behavior, the information intervention increased survey measures of the perceived returns to working longer, especially among female respondents.
ER  -