Retirement saving in Japan: With emphasis on the impact of social securityand retirement payments

In this paper, we apply Kazuo Sate's target wealth hypothesis to saving for life after retirement and analyze the impact of social security wealth. re tirement payments, permanent income, and other factors on people's retireme nt saving using micro data from the Survey of Social Security and Self Help , which was conducted in 1996 by the Japan Institute of Life Insurance. Our findings provide strong confirmation of the target wealth hypothesis and o f the life cycle model and imply that the Japanese take account of their fu ture social security benefits and retirement payments, their permanent inco me, etc, when saving for life after retirement.