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Women’s Household Preparation for Retirement at Young and Mid-Adulthood: Differences by Children and Marital Status

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Abstract

There are increasing concerns about whether Americans are saving enough for retirement. Recent research has called for improved understanding of the relationship between family structure and economic preparation for retirement at earlier stages of the life course. Using multiple years of the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances, we examined how number of children and marital status were associated with women’s household retirement savings at young and mid-adulthood. Several household-level indicators of retirement preparation were considered: desire to save for retirement, retirement account ownership, eligibility to participate in a defined-contribution plan, participation in defined-contribution plans, and retirement account wealth. Results from regression analyses revealed variation in women’s household financial preparation for retirement at young and mid-adulthood by family context. Additional children were negatively associated with several measures of retirement preparation among single-female households but not for couple households. Overall, we found that low economic preparation for retirement is an additional economic disadvantage facing single mothers at young and mid-adulthood, with potentially long-term implications for their financial security. The results shed light on linkages between family structure and women’s economic status.

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Notes

  1. We examined the sensitivity of our results to other possible age-related sample restrictions. For example, we limited the sample such that the age differences between married and cohabiting partners were not greater than 7 years, finding similar results to those presented here.

  2. In the private sector, spousal benefits under traditional DB pensions are governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). ERISA requires DB pensions to offer a joint and survivor annuity at retirement. Retirees can choose a single-life annuity only if both the retiree and his or her spouse both elect in writing to decline the joint and survivor annuity. Federal civil service pensions and most state and local government pension plans have similar requirements for a joint and survivor annuity to be the default form of benefit for married retirees.

  3. The name of an employer-sponsored plan often refers to the section of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC). The multiplicity of plan types results mainly from separate sections of the IRC authorizing plans for workers in the private sector, the public sector, and at educational and cultural institutions. Differences in plan types are unlikely to have influenced the results of our research.

  4. Regular IRAs and Roth IRAs are both retirement savings accounts. They differ mainly in the way in which taxes are deferred.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Editor and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments. Thanks also to Howard Iams, Glenn Springstead, Kevin Whitman, and Natalie Lu for comments. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the Social Security Administration (SSA) or any federal agency.

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  1. Office of Retirement Policy, U.S. Social Security Administration, 500 E Street, S.W., Washington, DC, 20254, USA

    Christopher R. Tamborini & Patrick Purcell

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  1. Christopher R. Tamborini
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  2. Patrick Purcell
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Correspondence to Christopher R. Tamborini.

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Tamborini, C.R., Purcell, P. Women’s Household Preparation for Retirement at Young and Mid-Adulthood: Differences by Children and Marital Status. J Fam Econ Iss 37, 226–241 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-015-9449-0

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