Precautionary saving and old-age provisions: Do subjective saving motive measures work?

Content literature on precautionary saving provides contradictory views on the importance of precautionary saving. The SAVE data offer the possibility to generate some of the frequently used instruments known from the literature in order to measure the extent of precautionary savings. This paper compares the influence of these instruments on long-run and short-run saving measures. In addition, SAVE contains information on a broad range of saving motives. This paper uses these short-run and long-run savings motives to describe differences in savings, saving rates and wealth accumulation.