The study, which examined a large public workforce in which women save a lower percentage of their income and take on lower-return investments, found that a particular program targeted specifically to increase women’s retirement savings through information and motivation was quite effective.

The effects of the Embracing and Promoting Options for Women to Enhance Retirement (EMPOWER) program, a multimedia education effort implemented by several state agencies in Wisconsin in 2015, leads the study to conclude that workplace financial education and peer-to-peer motivation increase retirement savings.

The researchers write, “Wisconsin state workers are required to contribute to a pension fund, but 47 percent also participate in a deferred-compensation savings instrument similar to a 401(k), with the median participant contributing 1.6 percent of their earnings each month. EMPOWER increased participation in the deferred-compensation instrument by 2.6 percentage points, closing the gender gap in participation by more than half.”

The study also finds that the program “operated with very low marginal costs, and is likely to be portable to other contexts.”

One caveat, however, is that although there was greater participation in savings, it wasn’t necessarily by older workers; much of the increase was owed to greater participation by younger workers.