Americans face an even bleaker retirement

Another way of looking at the chart above is this: It tracks the closing window of opportunity for overhauling U.S. policy, which has yet to respond to the near-disappearance of defined-benefit pensions. As the share of Americans who say they’re worried about retirement falls further below 50 percent, the political payoff for pushing new initiatives falls, too — something that can’t be lost on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her advisers, as they decide how to translate her concern for “everyday Americans” into actual proposals.

If Americans’ growing confidence in their retirement reflected improving circumstances that were widely shared, then the declining odds of reform wouldn’t be much of a problem — just the opposite. But that’s not what’s happening.

Jack VanDerhei, EBRI’s research director and one of the authors of the survey, said that confidence probably reflects a booming stock market for people who have employer-based retirement plans, which is just less than half of all private- sector workers.

“This could happen without any increase in the percentage saving,” VanDerhei told me by email. The numbers back him up: The group that’s expanded the most since 2010 is those with savings of $250,000 or more. But at 14 percent of workers, that group still reflects a particularly unrepresentative minority.

So the good news in these numbers is that more American workers feel confident about theirretirement. The bad news is, that confidence could reduce pressure for reforms that the rest of the country still badly needs.