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Hyperbolic discounting with naiveté is widely believed to provide a better explanation than exponential discounting of why people borrow so much and why they wait so long to save for retirement. We reach a different set of conclusions. We show that if financial planning is enriched to include the choice of when to retire, then naïve hyperbolic discounters may borrow far less and start saving for retirement significantly earlier than exponential discounters.

This paper considers the quantitative role of growth in the size of the social security program in contributing to the collapse of personal saving in the U.S. over the last few decades. Using a calibrated, general equilibrium life-cycle model this paper shows that social security may not be to blame. Specifically, the model predicts that a 50-percent increase in the social security tax rate (as in the U.S. over the last half century) produces a modest decline in the personal saving rate from 10 percent down to 9.6 percent. This result runs counter to some popular opinion.