Thursday, June 28, 2018

Does America Have a Retirement Crisis?

Americans are reaching retirement age in worse financial shape than the prior generation, for the first time since Harry Truman was president. A new analysis by the Wall Street Journal shows that Americans verging on retirement have high average debt, are often paying off children’s educations and are dipping into savings to care for aging parents.

This cohort should be on the cusp of their golden years, but their median incomes including Social Security and retirement-fund receipts haven’t risen in years, after having increased steadily from the 1950s. Median personal income of Americans 55 through 69 leveled off after 2000—for the first time since data became available in 1950.

The percentage of families with any debt headed by people 55 or older has risen steadily for more than two decades, to 68 percent in 2016 from 54 percent in 1992, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Americans aged 60 through 69 had about $2 trillion in debt in 2017, an 11 percent increase per capita from 2004.

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