IRA Asset Allocation, 2013, and Longitudinal Results, 2010-2013

This paper is the fifth examination of asset allocation from the EBRI IRA Database, an ongoing project that collects data from IRA plan administrators. For 2013, it contained information on 25.8 million accounts with total assets of $2.46 trillion. The number of IRAs in the database with complete asset-allocation data was lower, at 21.1 million accounts with $2.11 trillion in assets. This paper examines asset allocation on a dollar-weighted basis within IRAs by type and account balance, as well as by gender and age of the account owner. In addition to presenting the average asset allocation across the accounts, this study includes a presentation of the percentage of accounts with “extreme” allocations -- either less than 10 percent or more than 90 percent in a particular asset-category. This helps illustrate the distribution of the allocations to the various assets across all of the IRAs. Furthermore, a longitudinal component is added to this study to see how the asset allocations of those in the database have changed. The latest data from the EBRI IRA Database show that more than half of all IRA assets were allocated to equities, although this varied with age, account balance, and IRA type. Gender differences in asset allocations were minimal. Those older or owning a traditional IRA had, on average, lower allocations to equities. Individuals with the largest balances had the lowest combined exposure to equities (including the addition of the equity share of balanced funds to the pure equity funds). This study includes the first look at asset allocation longitudinally from 2010-2013 and finds that equity allocations in 2013 were higher than they were in 2010 and 2012. This result appears to be driven by the nearly 50 percent of accounts that remained at an extreme value (0 percent or 100 percent allocation) in both years and the higher probability of a positive change from 2010 to 2013 in the equity allocation.The PDF for the above title, published in the September 2015 issue of EBRI Notes, also contains the full text of another September 2015 EBRI Notes article abstracted on SSRN: “2015 EBRI/Greenwald & Associates Health and Voluntary Workplace Benefits Survey: Most Workers Continue to Give Low Ratings to Health Care System, but Declining Number Report Health Care Cost Increases.”