Drivers of savings in Swiss households : which role does well-being play?
Creators: name: Ceramella, Dominique
Publisher: name: ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften
Year: 2021
Subjects: 332: Finanzwirtschaft

description: The importance of savings and its underlying drivers have received growing attention in the literature over the years. On the one hand, savings are crucial for ensuring sufficient retirement income while, on the other hand, also acting as a buffer and protection against unforeseen financial shortfalls. Consequently, having savings increases the standard of living within households, individuals, and the economy. Therefore, understanding the various drivers of savings is of general interest to both government and policymakers. As such, the government is eager to ensure that its citizens’ well-being and savings remain both stable and reasonably high. To date, several drivers of savings have been researched, which have mainly focused on demographic, geographic, economic, and psychographic variables. However, there is limited research on the role of well-being for being a driver of savings. 
The aim of this thesis was to provide further insight on the different drivers of savings in Swiss households, and the role that well-being plays using data from the 2018 wave of the Swiss Household Panel. Thus, complementing the existing literature, an overview of the different variables influencing savings is given, with a special focus on well-being. 
For this purpose, a comprehensive literature review was conducted to provide a clear foundation outlining the different drivers for savings. The respective drivers were then classified into the following categories: demographic, geographic, economic, psychographic, and well-being. From these, only three categories (demographic, geographic, and well-being) were further used to conduct the empirical analysis. The corresponding data was processed and analyzed through linear regression analysis and a quantile regression analysis. For both analyses, the program software RStudio (version 1.4.1106) was used. 
The findings of this thesis are partially in line with existing literature. For instance, it was found that variables such as age, gender, number of children, income, and culture had a significant influence on savings. Civil status, education, and working status were only partially significant because certain dummy variables belonging to those drivers were insignificant. Moreover, the results verified that the well-being variables such as satisfaction with life and joy have a significant positive effect on savings. Whereas anger, sadness, worry, perceived stress, and depression all significantly negatively influenced savings. However, out of all well-being variables, satisfaction with life had the strongest impact of all on savings. 
Overall, it can be concluded that well-being variables have a significant impact on savings. Although the different drivers of savings have been investigated extensively, little research is available on the different well-being variables and their influence on savings. Therefore, further research should be done for more insight into the different effects of well-being and savings.