Nevin's Data "Points"

Just when you thought retirement plan projections couldn’t get any worse… Last week the National Institute on Retirement Security released a report – “ Retirement in America | Out of Reach for Most Americans? ” that claimed that the median retirement account balance among all working individuals is… $0.00. Moreover, that same report claims that “57 percent (more than 100 million) of working age individuals do not own any retirement account assets in an employer-sponsored 401(k)-type plan, individual account or pension.” It’s not the first time the NIRS has produced reports finding significant problems with the nation’s private retirement system. Indeed, this report “builds on previous NIRS research published in 2015,” though the conclusions presented here seem unusually stark. Then, as now, the NIRS conclusions rely heavily on self-reported numbers from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program P...

A recent report by the GAO paints a pretty bleak picture of American retirement. Is it accurate? For the most part, the report  covered familiar ground, bemoaning the “marked shift” away from the traditional defined benefit pension plan (glossing over how few private sector workers were covered by these plans, even in their heyday, and the fraction of those who received a full pension), and highlighting low savings rates, the pervasive lack of broad-based access to workplace retirement plans and the daunting challenges confronting even those who do enjoy that access. The report also spends several of its 173 pages chronicling (with pictures) the ways in which “leakage” also undermines retirement savings. And for good measure, it invokes the findings of the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index   — which the GAO calls the “most comprehensive” — that ranks the U.S. retirement system 20th out of 25 countries surveyed (and gives us a “C” grade). Indeed, ...