Gender Income Gap Creates Women’s Retirement Savings Shortfall

In addition, the Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) said women are more likely than men to be caregivers—resulting in lost or decreased wages. This time out of the work force combined with income disparities, decreases Social Security and employer-provided retirement benefits. The result is that women have less retirement savings and retirement income from traditional resources, which are required to cover longer average retirement spans and higher lifetime health care costs.    

While half of Boomer men have retirement savings of at least $200,000, only 35% of female Boomers have reached this level of savings, the research found. Only one-third of Boomer women are highly confident that they will have enough money to cover their health care expenses during retirement—compared with 41% of Boomer men.    

More than 43% of Boomer women expect to retire at age 65 or later and more than 34% do not know when they will retire. Only four in 10 women ages 55 and older believe they have done a good job planning financially for retirement. One-quarter of women have little to no confidence that they are planning appropriately for retirement.    

Nearly 53% of Boomer women have not consulted with a financial adviser. When selecting a retirement investment product, the most important traits to Boomer women are guaranteed monthly income, financial adviser recommendation and rate of return. 

The research report is here.