Aspen Institute, March 18, 2024, Same Income, Same 401(k), Different Account Balance: The Critical Role Of Retirement Plan Design In Addressing Racial And Gender Retirement Savings Gaps
To realize the promise of inclusive retirement savings, we have work to do. First, we have to expand access to the 57 million workers—disproportionately workers of color, women, and workers earning lower wages—who do not currently have a workplace retirement savings plan. Second, we have to ensure that we’re providing access to a tool that works for everyone. But we aren’t there yet: Even among workers who do have access to a plan, we see significant differences in balance accumulation by race and gender.
In 2023, in collaboration with Morningstar Retirement and DCIIA (The Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association), we launched The Collaborative for Equitable Retirement Savings (CFERS) to uncover the answers to these questions. At the Collaborative, we partner with leading employers to combine anonymous employee demographic data with retirement plan transactional data to analyze how plans are currently working for savers and what opportunities may exist to make them perform more equitably and efficiently.
