Frames, Incentives, and Education: Effectiveness of Interventions to Delay Public Pension Claiming

Franca Glenzer, Pierre-Carl Michaud and Stefan Staubli
Working paper #11
Retirement and Savings Institute – January 2023

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Many near-retirees forgo a higher stream of public pension income by claiming their pension early. We provide both quasi-experimental and survey-experimental evidence that the timing of CPP/QPP pension claiming is relatively irresponsive to changes in financial incentives in Canada. Using a survey experiment, we evaluate the effect of two different educational interventions and different ways of framing the incentive to delay claiming. While all three types of interventions induce delays, these interventions have heterogeneous financial consequences for participants who react.