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February 28, 2017 at 02:12 AM
(Bloomberg) — A few weeks after the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives moved to kill rules allowing states to create portable retirement savings accounts, a new survey found that 75 percent of Americans support just such an option.
Related: House votes to block state-run retirement plans
The response was a common refrain in a report that echoed the growing dread of living out one’s golden years in poverty. Politicians in Washington just don’t get how hard it is to prepare for retirement, according to 85 percent of those polled by Greenwald & Associates for the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS).
That kind of unity was related in large part to a grim view of the future faced by the elderly:
“If current trends continue, the U.S. soon will face rates of poverty among senior citizens not seen since the Great Depression. Of the 18 million workers between the ages of 55 and 64 in 2012, more than four million will be poor or near poor at age 65. This includes 2.6 million Americans considered middle-class prior to retirement.”
Related: The biggest problem with traditional retirement planning
The survey, part of a larger research project looking at U.S. views on retirement security, randomly polled 800 people age 25 or older by phone since the 2016 election. The report concluded that “Americans are united in their anxiety about their economic security in retirement and in their dissatisfaction with national policy makers’ inaction to address the nations retirement crisis.”
Despite the political divide that has frozen the nation in place on other issues, support for such state-sponsored savings plans was close to bipartisan. Some 83 percent of Democrats were in favor of the option for those without work-sponsored plans, compared with 72 percent of Republicans.
Party lines were even less important when it came to how respondents viewed their own prospects. Almost 76 percent of those polled worry that economic conditions might hurt their chances for a secure retirement. Meanwhile, nostalgia for the days of guaranteed income streams from defined benefit pension plans runs deep. Seventy-one percent of Americans said pensions beat 401(k)s in helping them live comfortably in retirement.
The Greenwald & Associates report concluded that, ‘Americans are united in their anxiety about their economic security in retirement and in their dissatisfaction with national policy makers’ inaction to address the nations retirement crisis.’ (Photo: iStock)