Portfolio Composition and Pension Wealth: An Econometric Study

There has been very little study of the consequences of pension wealth for the composition of household portfolios. Using individual data for 10,118 Canadian households we estimate the portfolio effect of pension wealth. Because most households do not own all of the assets which we are able to distinguish, we model asset demands as a mixed discrete-continuous portfolio choice problem. We find that whereas there is an identifiable effect of pension wealth on total private savings, the effect on portfolio choice is less significant. Moreover, within the area of portfolio composition the main effect is in terms of the particular number and combination of assets held rather than the amount of any given asset as a proportion of total wealth.