27 May 2008 – Wealth and assets survey: Employer pensions follow up. Feasibility report.

Findings are published today from a study commissioned by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to assess the feasibility and merit of collecting information from employers to complement and validate (consenting) Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS) respondents’ occupational pensions details.

Information was collected by an Independent Research organisation to form part of a wider strategy of editing, cleaning and exploring data improvements to further enhance the production of robust WAS survey information.

Employer data were matched to WAS respondent data and analysed for a number of occupational pension related questions.

Of those WAS respondents who said that they were eligible to join their employers' pension scheme, 60 per cent (1,460) consented to DWP contacting their employer. Fifty eight per cent (850) of contacted employers responded. When taking into account the two stages of response an overall response rate of 35 per cent was achieved.

Findings

• The highest level of data improvement relates to information on accrual rates for Defined Benefit schemes and how Defined Benefit pensions might be calculated. If this study were to be conducted as a full scale study of employers it is estimated that this would add value to almost one in five WAS respondents who are employees and eligible to join their employers' Defined Benefit occupational pension.
• The highest level of data improvement for Defined Contribution schemes related to employer contributions (equating to 11 per cent across the entire WAS sample eligible to join their employers Defined Contribution scheme).
• Any mainstage study designed to collect pensions information from employers should only collect data on the areas that add the most value (outlined in bullets above), via a postal questionnaire with additional resource set aside to edit and clean employer address information before contact.

Notes to editors

1. The DWP 'Wealth and Assets Survey: Employer Pensions Follow Up Feasibility Report' is published in DWP's Working Paper Series on 27 May 2008.
2. The Wealth and Assets Survey (WAS), a large quantitative face to face longitudinal study (representative of individuals in households), is conducted on behalf of a number of Government Departments (including DWP) by the Office for National Statistics to collect detailed information on pensions, savings and wealth.
3. WAS respondents were eligible for inclusion in the employer follow up survey if they:
   • took part in WAS fieldwork in its first four months (July to October 2006);
   • were employees;
   • were eligible to be members of their employer's occupational pension scheme
   • consented to DWP contacting their employer.
4. Employer data was collected (in July to October 2007) via a postal/web survey and matched to the relevant WAS mainstage individual information for the purposes of analysis.
5. The first two bullet points in this study refer to data improvements. The relatively low proportion of proposed data improvements across those WAS respondents with an occupational pension are explained by a number of factors:
   • the number of respondents who consented to DWP contacting their employer;
   • the number of contacted employers who participated
   • levels of respondent accuracy.
6. Data is not representative of respondents with an occupational pension however the report does make some inferences for lessons learned for this group.
7. The authors of the follow up study are Joel Williams and Hannah Carpenter from BMRB Social Research.