Mandatory pensions and personal savings in the Netherlands

The Netherlands has a relatively generous social security system and a wide coverage of individuals by private (occupational) pension schemes. Total household savings are rather high and fairly stable, although the amount of contractual savings apears to be going up at the expense of non-contractual ('free') savings. Using an approach originally pioneered by Feldstein (1974) we employ microdata to investigate the displacement effect of security and pension wealth on free household savings. It turns out that the data available are too noisy to make precise statements about the displacement effects. Our results do suggest, however, that a one-for-one displacement of free savings by social security is consistent with the data. For pensions such a complete offset is less likely. This suggests that increase of coverage by private pensions is an effective way of raising savings.