Do State Auto-IRA Mandates Increase Retirement Savings? Evidence from Staggered Policy Adoption

Abstract

Since Oregon pioneered its OregonSaves program in 2017, ten states have implemented mandatory auto-enrollment retirement savings programs for private-sector workers without employer-sponsored plans. These programs leverage insights from behavioral economics: by automatically enrolling workers into state-facilitated IRAs with default contribution rates, they aim to overcome the inertia that prevents many Americans from saving for retirement. This paper provides the first comprehensive evaluation of these programs across multiple states using a staggered difference-in-differences design with heterogeneity-robust estimators. Using data from the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement (2012-2024), I find a small, statistically insignificant overall effect on retirement plan coverage among private-sector workers (ATT = 0.5 percentage points, SE = 0.8 pp). However, results vary substantially by treatment cohort: early adopters (Oregon, Illinois) show positive effects of 1.5-2 percentage points, while California's 2019 program shows negative effects. Pre-trends are flat, supporting the parallel trends assumption. These findings suggest that while auto-IRA programs may modestly expand retirement coverage, their effects are heterogeneous and smaller than the dramatic impacts documented for employer-based auto-enrollment programs.