Retirement security improved for millions of Americans between 2019 and 2022, according to a new report from The Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program.
Retirement account ownership increased by almost 4 percentage points to 54% of households, with evidence suggesting that the trend continued in 2023 and 2024 as state-run retirement savings programs have grown, said Katherine McKay, the program’s associate director of insights and evidence, during a media briefing Sept. 19.
“There are multiple states still in the process of rolling out their state platforms, including places like Maryland,” McKay said.
Median balances of households’ retirement accounts also improved, rising by 16% to $87,000.
In addition, the Boston College Center for Retirement Research’s National Retirement Risk Index, a barometer that measures the risk of not being able to maintain one’s standard of living in retirement, fell to 39% in 2022 from 47% in 2019.
Lower-wealth households, however, did not benefit as much from the gains, McKay said, explaining that white households are still the most likely to hold retirement accounts and have the highest median balances.
More than 3 in 5 white households (62%) own retirement accounts, while only 35% of Black households and 28% of Hispanic households do, she said, citing report statistics.
Racial disparities in median account balances are also stark. White households have a median account balance of $100,000 compared with $55,600 for Hispanic households and $39,000 for Black households.
The report is part of a program the Aspen Institute launched in 2023 to increase tenfold the wealth of households of color and those in the bottom half of wealth distribution by 2050.
While the wealth gap between white and Black households decreased between 2019 and 2022, it remains substantial, McKay said. For example, in 2022, median white household wealth was 6.5 times greater than median Black household wealth, an improvement from 2019 when white households had 8 times the wealth of Black households.
“That is a lot of progress but it also is not enough progress,” McKay said.
The report draws on the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances by the Federal Reserve and other data. In addition to retirement security, the report measures progress made on several fronts, including whether households are able to have routinely positive cash flow.
