Unequal returns to retirement information: Information asymmetry, financial capability, and decision support

Retirement information can be equally disclosed yet produce unequal benefits. This conceptual review distinguishes information held privately by counterparties from the costs of finding and interpreting common facts, and from the constraints on acting upon them. It connects saving, income projections, annuity valuation and purchasing-power research with evidence on fee salience, conflicts of interest and advice uptake. The comparisons indicate that disclosure, numerical instruction and implementation support target different mechanisms; none can be inferred from a product response alone. Published studies also distinguish the people offered assistance from those who use it, making selected-user gains insufficient evidence that a population gap has narrowed. An analytical extension formalizes this distinction. Under an explicit common task-loss metric, average improvement depends on reach, potential effectiveness and their association within a group. Exact examples show how opposite selection patterns can widen or narrow a gap despite identical use rates and marginal benefit distributions. Alternative response functions preserve the expected-benefit criterion but change numerical thresholds. These are accounting and comparative-static results, not fitted household effects or welfare estimates. The review identifies testable distinctions for retirement information and intermediation while retaining nonusers, provider incentives and household constraints in the interpretation.