Personal retirement accounts are becoming an increasingly important form of retirement saving. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the paper considers the effect of this change on the assets of recent retirees and persons who are approaching retirement. Much of the...

Over the past several years, we have undertaken a series of analysies of the effect of IRA and 401(k) contributions on net personal saving. Saver hetero- geneity is the key impediment to determining the saving effect of these plans We emphasize that no single method can provide sure control for...

One of the central issues in evaluating the ongoing shift from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) pension plans is the degree to which assets in DC plans will be withdrawn before plan participants reach retirement age. The annual flow of withdrawals from such plans, which are...

Personal retirement accounts are becoming an increasingly important form of retirement saving. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the paper considers the effect of this change on the assets of recent retirees and persons who are approaching retirement. Much of the...

During the late 1980s. contributions to 401(k) plans eclipsed contributions to Individual Retirement Accounts as the leading form of tax-deferred individual retirement saving. This paper uses data from the 1984. 1987. and 1991 Surveys of Income and Program Participation to describe patterns of...

Retirement saving accounts, particularly employer-provided 401(k) plans rapidly in the last decade. More than forty percent of workers are currently eligible for these" plans, and over seventy percent of eligibles participate in these plans. The substantial and" ongoing accumulation of assets in...

This paper examines the role of 40 1(k) plans in retirement saving by U.S. households. It charts the rapid growth of these plans during the 1980s; more than 15 million workers now participate in 401(k)s. Data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation are used to calculate 401(k)...