The 2008 Retirement Confidence Survey ®: Americans Much More Worried About Retirement, Health Costs a Big Concern

Abstract: This paper presents key findings from the 18th annual Retirement Confidence Survey® (RCS), a survey that gauges the views and attitudes of working-age and retired Americans regarding retirement, their preparations for retirement, their confidence with regard to various aspects of retirement, and related issues. The 18th wave of the RCS finds that Americans' confidence in their ability to afford a comfortable retirement has dropped to its lowest level in seven years, reflecting worries about health costs, the economy, and home values. Decreases in confidence occurred across all age groups and income levels but was particularly acute among younger workers and those with lower incomes. However, this decreased confidence does not appear to have affected the way most Americans plan and save for retirement. Moreover, the RCS finds that faulty assumptions still hinder a realistic assessment of the preparations needed to ensure a financially secure retirement. In addition, the survey found that about half of workers (47 percent) say they and/or their spouse have tried to calculate how much money they will need for a comfortable retirement, up considerably from the low point of 29 percent measured in 1996. As before, the 2008 survey finds that doing a retirement savings calculation is particularly effective at changing worker behavior: 44 percent who calculated a goal changed their retirement planning, and of those almost two-thirds (59 percent) started saving or investing more. The 2008 Retirement Confidence Survey® was conducted in January 2008 through 20-minute random telephone interviews with 1,322 individuals (1,057 workers and 265 retirees) age 25 and older in the United States. The RCS was co-sponsored by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization; and Mathew Greenwald & Associates, Inc., a Washington, DC-based market research firm.

Keywords: Retirement attitudes and opinions, Retirement planning

JEL Classifications: J26

Accepted Paper Series

Suggested Citation
Helman, Ruth, VanDerhei, Jack and Copeland, Craig, "The 2008 Retirement Confidence Survey ®: Americans Much More Worried About Retirement, Health Costs a Big Concern" . EBRI Issue Brief, No. 316, April 2008 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1123642