Few workers in the U.S. and around the world are truly confident they’re going to have a comfortable retirement, a new global survey shows.
Only 28 percent of U.S. workers are “very” or “extremely” confident that they’ll one day fully retire with a comfortable lifestyle; a third are somewhat confident.
And 19 percent of workers globally have high confidence levels that they’ll have a comfy retirement, with the greatest percentage of people feeling that way in China (41 percent) and the lowest rates in France (6 percent) and Poland (4 percent), according to the survey of 16,000 workers and retirees in 15 countries in Europe, North and South America and Asia. The survey was commissioned by the nonprofit Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies and the Dutch insurance company Aegon.
“Retirement systems vary by country, yet we all have in common an aging population and a need for people to take on more personal responsibility for long-term financial security,” said Transamerica Center President Catherine Collinson. “Workers around the world face the increasing need to save, plan and self-fund a greater portion of their own retirement.”
She says that workers in China may be more confident about their retirement than those in other nations because the country has “a booming economy,” and the survey responses were “predominantly from urban areas in China where people may be benefiting from the economic boom.”
Still, she says, 53 percent of workers worldwide expect future generations of retirees to be worse off than those currently in retirement. About 80 percent of workers in Germany, Hungary and France expect future retirees to be worse off than current retirees. “This is likely a reflection of the financial pressures on some countries’ retirement systems, as well as the global financial crisis,” Collinson said.
About 41 percent of workers globally say they’ll rely on the government to fund their retirement to some extent, but only 21 percent expect the government to be their main source of income. When asked about a retirement-planning strategy, 56 percent of workers have some sort of plan, either written or unwritten; 40 percent say they have no plan, and the rest don’t know.
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