401(k) plan administrative records (restricted access)

Confidential single-counterparty data: not exercised here

This is confidential data from a single retirement-plan recordkeeper. It is not for sale and not publicly downloadable: it carries no provenance badge because there is no access path we can run here. Researchers obtained it under a confidential agreement with the recordkeeper, anonymized. The page documents what the data is and the gotchas; treat it as unverified. This is the honest grade under the institute’s Verified discipline.

The 401(k) administrative records are the plan-administration microdata held by a large U.S. retirement-plan recordkeeper: for each participant, the portfolio allocation, participation status, contribution rate, and the features of the employer plan (notably the default investment and auto-enrollment settings). Because a recordkeeper administers many employers’ plans, the data spans a large cross-section of plans and workers with the plan-design detail that public surveys lack. A paper we distill uses it: Choukhmane & de Silva use anonymized 401(k) administrative records from a large recordkeeper (December 2006 to December 2017, about 4 million employees across more than 600,000 plans) for portfolio allocations, participation, contribution rates, and plan defaults, to study what drives investors’ portfolio choices.

• Cost: not for sale. Confidential single-counterparty data.
• Source: a large U.S. retirement-plan recordkeeper (anonymized).
• Coverage: participants in the plans this recordkeeper administers, not all U.S. workers; high-detail allocation and plan-design data over the sample window.

Access (restricted)

• No public download and no resale. The data is the recordkeeper’s confidential administrative records; it cannot be purchased or redistributed.
• Through a confidential agreement with the recordkeeper. Access required a research agreement, and the recordkeeper is anonymized. There is no standing way for a third party to reach the same data.

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

These are the failure modes to expect; they are documented, not verified here.

• One recordkeeper is a selected set of plans. The plans administered by this recordkeeper are not a random sample of U.S. employers; plan size, industry, and design skew the data. Do not treat it as the universe of 401(k) plans.
• Defaults drive observed choices. A large share of allocations reflect the plan default and auto-enrollment, not active choice; treating observed allocation as revealed preference confounds default effects. Separate active from defaulted participants.
• Within-plan, not whole-portfolio. The data shows assets in this 401(k), not the household’s other accounts (IRAs, taxable, a spouse’s plan); apparent risk-taking can reflect partial coverage. Treat it as one account.
• Plan menu constrains allocations. Participants can only hold the funds the plan offers; the menu, not just preferences, shapes allocations. Condition on the plan menu.
• Job and plan changes break panels. Participants leave plans on job change and the recordkeeper may lose them; the panel is unbalanced for administrative reasons. Model entry/exit.
• Not redistributable. Results can be reported but the microdata cannot be shared and cannot be re-pulled by others. Plan for non-reproducibility of the raw inputs.

Citation

Cite the source and arrangement, e.g.: 401(k) plan administrative records (large U.S. recordkeeper, anonymized), confidential; used under agreement, YYYY-MM-DD. State the sample window, the number of plans/participants, and the treatment of defaults.