Americans Less Confident About Retirement Savings

Rising layoffs and a declining stock market are taking their toll on Americans’ confidence about retirement savings, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s annual retirement survey.

After years of steady growth, the number of Americans who say they’re saving for retirement has fallen--and so has the number who are confident about their economic prospects in retirement.

“The picture portrayed by the overall trends is generally positive,” said Dallas Salisbury, chief executive of the nonprofit public policy research organization.

“But retirement confidence has declined slightly. That may be caused by changes in the economy, as well as the attention paid to Medicare and health-care costs during the presidential election.”

The percentage of respondents who say they have personally saved for retirement declined to 71% in 2001, from 75% the year before.

However, just three years ago, only 59% of those surveyed were saving, according to the institute.

Fewer consumers--63% versus 72%--are confident about having enough money to retire comfortably today than they were a year ago.

Retirement confidence and savings patterns are sharply different among minority groups, according to the study.

For example, 78% of Asian Americans say they are saving for retirement, while the percentages are sharply lower among Hispanic Americans (50%) and African Americans (54%).

Not surprisingly, confidence about retirement security closely tracked savings patterns.

Confidence in the Social Security and Medicare systems appears to be rising.

In 1993, only 23% of Americans surveyed were either very or somewhat confident that Social Security would continue to provide the same level of benefits to future retirees as it does today.

In the 2001 survey, 34% of respondents said they are confident Social Security could maintain that level of benefits.

Similarly, when surveyed in 1993, just 24% of respondents are confident that Medicare would pay comparable benefits when they retired, but 39% think so today.

The survey of 1,000 people has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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Money Saved

When asked how much they have saved for retirement, here’s how 1,000 people responded: Less than $5,000: 8%

$5,000--$24,999: 16%

$25,000--$49,999: 7%

$50,000--$99,000: 8%

$100,000 or more: 15%

Don’t know/refused: 27%

Source: 2001 Retirement Confidence Survey