US. Retirement plan participation higher than previously thought: ICI
More workers than commonly thought participate in retirement plans, according to a study by the Investment Company Institute. But even with the new numbers, there’s plenty of room for improvement.
The study by the mutual fund industry’s trade group found that 63% of all workers aged 26 to 64 participated in an employer-sponsored retirement plan either directly or through a spouse.
ICI’s study looked at data from the IRS Statistics of Income Division Form W-2 study. The data provide an alternative measure to the most commonly cited data on retirement plan participation, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey (CPS), which, the ICI said, understated retirement plan participation by about five percentage points. Overall, among all working taxpayers aged 26 to 64 in 2013, 55% were active participants in a retirement plan (defined benefit, defined contribution or both), and 63% were either active participants or had a spouse who was an active participant.
Most of those who don’t participate in employer savings tend to be those who are young and in lower income brackets, the paper notes. “They are investing in different things — their education, their family, a house,” Peter Brady, senior ICI economist and author of the paper.
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