In light of the economic challenges of 2020, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College revised upward its National Retirement Risk Index and announced that 51 percent of today’s workers are at risk of being unprepared for retirement.
Researchers published an Issue Brief this week that explained the logic behind why the NRRI was updated and recommended universal access to employer-based savings plans to help improve retirement security.
The Center for Retirement Research publishes the NRRI every three years to gauge retirement preparedness in America. Between 2016 and 2019, the NRRI dropped slightly – from 50 to 49 percent – fueled by solid gains in the stock market and continued growth in the housing market.
“Since 2019, the economy has been hit by the fallout of the pandemic, which has primarily been reflected in higher unemployment,” says the Issue Brief. “The bottom line is that half of today’s households will not have enough retirement income to maintain their pre-retirement standard of living, even if they work to age 65 and annuitize all their financial assets, including the receipts from a reverse mortgage on their homes. This analysis clearly confirms that we need to fix our retirement system so that employer plan coverage is universal.”
Retirement Preparedness Index Worsens Under COVID
