We implement a randomized field experiment in rural Ghana to evaluate two interventions designed to enhance smallholder cocoa farmers’ aspirations and hope regarding old age and encourage them to save more for their pension: First, an intervention aimed at enhancing aspirations, namely an “aspirational video”; second, an intervention that increases the salience of farmer’s savings goals for old age, namely a “goal reminder calendar”.
We find that the video significantly enhances aspirations in the short-run. Interestingly, while we find no significant long-term average treatment effect on aspirations one year after the intervention, our analysis reveals stark heterogeneity across gender and initial level of pension savings in the long-term treatment effect on aspirations for the combination of the video and goal reminder calendar. In addition, in the long run, we also find a positive average treatment effect of the video in combination with the calendar on farmers’ perceived agency, as a key component of hope. Notably, in the long-run, the combination of video and calendar also significantly increases pension savings among smallholders who were already saving towards their pension prior to our interventions.
The study of interventions aimed at enhancing the welfare of the elderly in developing countries, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa, has become increasingly important, as the region experiences significant life expectancy gains, while formal social safety nets for the elderly in rural areas are still widely absent and informal social safety nets are deteriorating. Our findings can provide useful information for designing effective pro-poor old-age welfare policies in this context.