By Hazel Trice Edney –
A recent study has outlined a disturbing trend across the nation: Increasing retirement woes among Black people, coming from several angles indicate some could choose to work longer or seek more palatable options for savings and income.
Either people aren’t feeling on-track to retire, they’re worried about outliving whatever savings they are able to accrue, or their jobs don’t offer fair retirement plans for people of color. These being common fears in the Black community, some just breeze over the thought of retirement as a pipe dream.
“Black and Hispanic workers have significantly less access to employer-sponsored retirement plans than do white counterparts, exacerbating economic inequity and hampering the ability of people of color to build financial security later in life, according to researchers,” AARP reports. “Among private sector employees ages 18 to 64, more than 53 percent of African Americans and about 64 percent of Latinos do not have access to a workplace retirement plan, compared with about 42 percent for white workers and 45 percent for Asian Americans, a July 2022 report from the AARP Public Policy Institute found.”
According to the latest US Census data, more than 55.8 million adults are older than 65. That is nearly 17 percent of America’s population that is “retirement age.” Yet only half of Americans even have access to retirement plans. And although we know well what the gender gap is, what isn’t talked about enough is the retirement gap. Generally, studies on savings show that the average Black family has lower savings than the disparity between the average US family. It’s unsurprising, then, that 54% of Black Americans don’t have enough savings to retire—whether it be from system inequalities or otherwise.
All studies and reports on retirement are saying the same thing: People are worried about outliving their retirement…
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