Does Automatic Enrollment Increase Contributions to Supplement Retirement Programs by K-12 and University Employees? Robert L. Clark Denis Pelletier NBER Working Paper No. 26263

Issued in September 2019

NBER Program(s):Economics of Aging

This study examines the impact of the adoption of automatic enrollment provisions by schools and universities in the state of South Dakota for its supplemental retirement saving plan (SRP). In South Dakota, educational personnel are also covered by a defined benefit pension plan and by Social Security. Thus, career public employees in South Dakota can expect a life time annuity from these two programs of around 75 percent of their final salary. Prior to the introduction of automatic enrollment, the proportion of newly hired educators who were contributing to the SRP was less than two percent in their first year of employment. After the introduction of automatic enrollment, over 90 percent of newly hired workers who were auto enrolled were participating in the plan. Thus, auto enrollment is shown to have the same powerful impact on contributions to a retirement saving plan for educational employees even when they also can expect life annuities from a defined benefit pension plan. You may purchase this paper on-line in .pdf format from SSRN.com ($5) for electronic delivery. Access to NBER Papers You are eligible for a free download if you are a subscriber, a corporate associate of the NBER, a journalist, an employee of the U.S. federal government with a ".GOV" domain name, or a resident of nearly any developing country or transition economy. If you usually get free papers at work/university but do not at home, you can either connect to your work VPN or proxy (if any) or elect to have a link to the paper emailed to your work email address below. The email address must be connected to a subscribing college, university, or other subscribing institution. Gmail and other free email addresses will not have access. E-mail:

Acknowledgments Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w26263