Factors associated with saving for retirement in the informal sector. A case study of Wandegeya market vendors
Abstract
Retirement is the act of withdrawal from active employment and involvement in certain social activities and desirable conducts. During this time, one does not earn a regular salary since they are no longer employed or working. Therefore, they rely on savings they made during their years of employment to aid their survival during retirement. Lack of these savings means one may continue working despite attainment of the retirement age or rely on other people specifically family members for survival both of which aren’t guaranteed. This is why saving for retirement is important.
This study aims at examining the possible association between socio demographic factors (age, gender, marital status, education level), monthly earnings, knowledge on saving for retirement and attitude towards saving for retirement and the practice of saving for retirement in the informal sector of Uganda. This quantitative cross-sectional study involved distribution of 96 sets of questionnaires to respondents who were self-employed and informal sector workers in Wandegeya market. Univariate analysis, cross tabulations and logistic regression were performed on the variables in the study using STATA. The findings indicated a significant relationship between saving for retirement and knowledge of the meaning of saving for retirement(P=0.086), knowledge of URBRA(P=0.000) and the willingness to save with KACITA and MAZIMA(P=0.011) There were no other significant relationships between the other variables especially the socio demographic factors and saving for retirement. With further study, the researcher concluded that attitude towards saving for retirement was most likely to influence one’s ability to save for retirement. Knowledge of saving for retirement, monthly earnings and the socio demographic factors had no effect on saving for retirement. Therefore, there is a very urgent need to sensitize and educate the informal sector workers about the need to save for retirement, the available voluntary RBS set up especially for self-employed people and how they operate in order to create a trust and confidence in these people for them to be able to save with these schemes.