This paper examines the retirement decisions of Italian households using data from the Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) for 2008. The analysis focuses on the adequacy of pension wealth, knowledge of supplementary retirement rules, the determinants of enrolment decisions and workers' propensity to convert their wealth into an annuity at retirement.
The results indicate that pension wealth is inadequate for a substantial part of the Italian population. Moreover, workers have a poor understanding of the rules of supplementary retirement schemes and little awareness of their pension situation.
These results confirm that an improvement in financial education is essential in order to promote retirement saving. The analysis shows, however, that such interventions could be ineffective in the case of workers in lower income classes with little opportunity to increase their savings.
