Retirement Security

This blog post is part two in a series analyzing the recently released Survey of Consumer Finances from the Federal Reserve. The SCF is a triennial survey of American families that offers insights into income, wealth, debt, and savings over time. Today’s post explores the data on retirement account ownership.

Saving adequately for retirement helps pave the road to a comfortable and financially secure future. As part one of this series noted, the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) data show that in 2010, Americans prioritized the need for liquidity over saving for retirement for the first time since 2001. While precautionary savings allow families to plan for the short and mid-term, saving for retirement remains a critical long-term savings need. Indeed, despite the drop from first place, SCF data show that retirement ranked a close second in 2010.

The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include economic inequality, personal savings, and financial regulation.

The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include taxes, inequality, the impact of demographic shifts on retirement security, education, and housing regulation.

The Asset Report 2012’s new data on retirement reveals just how difficult it is becoming for Americans to save enough money to support themselves once they have stopped working, particularly in the wake of the recession. To start, fewer employers are offering retirement plans and fewer workers are participating in them; in fact, the level of participation in employer-sponsored plans is at its lowest level in thirty years. Additionally, the majority of workers who benefit from retirement plans are in higher-income jobs. Likewise, because virtually all of the funds the federal government allocates for retirement are in the form of regressive tax subsidies, workers in higher income brackets disproportionately benefit.  This policy in turn has a disparate impact on women and people of color, who are more likely to hold low-wage jobs without benefits.

The Asset Building Program hosted an event Thursday, March 29th to investigate the concept of “encore careers” as a potential way to bridge the retirement income gap. Civic Ventures, a non-profit focused on workforce issues for Baby Boomers, conceptualizes encore careers as “work that combines personal meaning and social impact with continued income in the second half of life.” As Michael Calabrese introduced the event, he identified the appeal of such careers for this demographic: many boomers are at risk of not being able to maintain their pre-retirement standard of living due to a $6.6 trillion retirement income deficit. Savings alone typically cannot cover income needs throughout retirement. For those that are physically able, entering a new career may be a viable alternative to dropping out of the workforce entirely.

The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on the The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include public benefits, consumer behavior, financial services, conversations about race and wealth, and the mortgage settlement.

The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on the The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include housing, inequality, banking options, welfare, and jobs.

Matt Unrath is the Director of the National Family Economic Security Program at Wider Opportunities for Women.

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the United States may be afflicted by high levels of unemployment for years to come. Compounding the challenge to public policy is the fact that many jobs in many sectors will never be restored, either because they depended on debt-enabled demand during the bubble economy years, like many jobs in finance, real estate, and construction, or because they are vulnerable in the long term to offshoring or automation.

The Asset Building News Week is a weekly Friday feature on the The Ladder, the Asset Building Program blog, designed to help readers keep up with news and developments in the asset building field. This week's topics include savings products and financial behavior, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, income inequality, and housing.