Who Benefits from Retirement Saving Incentives in the U.S.? Evidence on Gaps in Retirement Wealth Accumulation by Race and Parental Income

We are very grateful to Jackson Howell and Cashua Wang who provided outstanding research assistance. We thank Franca Glenzer, Luigi Guiso, Pascal Noel, and Natasha Sarin for illuminating discussions of this paper. We also thank James Choi, Amir Kermani, Debbie Lucas, Olivia S. Mitchell, Jim Poterba, John Sabelhaus, Jason Seligman, Angelino Viceisza, and Stephen Zeldes for extremely helpful conversations and comments. We thank Cristina Tello Trillo for her assistance in building the bridge from the Form 5500 data to the individual-level data. We are grateful to numerous seminar and conference participants for their helpful comments and suggestions. This report is released to inform interested parties of ongoing research and to encourage discussion. Any views expressed on statistical, methodological, technical, or operational issues are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the U.S. Census Bureau. The data in this paper have been cleared by the Census Bureau’s Disclosure Review Board release authorization numbers CBDRB-FY22-SEHSD003-001, CBDRB-FY22-SEHSD003-017, CBDRB-FY22-SEHSD003-033, CBDRB-FY23-SEHSD003-043, CBDRB-FY23-0494, CBDRB-FY24-0151, CBDRB-FY25-0400, and CBDRB-FY26-0106. The research reported herein was performed pursuant to a grant from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) funded as part of the Retirement and Disability Research Consortium through the Michigan Retirement and Disability Research Center Award RDR18000002. The opinions and conclusions expressed are solely those of the author(s) and do not represent the opinions or policy of SSA, any agency of the Federal Government, or the National Bureau of Economic Research. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of the contents of this report. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. We are very grateful to the MIT Institute Community & Equity Office, the MIT Sloan School of Management, the Yale University Tobin Center for Economic Policy, and the Yale University Arthur M. Okun Research and Policy Fund for co-funding this work.

• August 16, 2024