Summary
Executive Summary
As defined contribution plans have proliferated in the private sector, the assets in individual account retirement plans (IA plans) have become the predominant source of financial assets for the American families holding them. This is the finding from EBRI’s Issue Brief, “Individual Account Retirement Plans: An Analysis of the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances.”
According to the Survey of Consumer Finances,1 assets in IA plans have exploded over the past several decades for families that own them. In 1992, of the families owning IA plan assets, total IA plan assets accounted for 44.3 percent of these families’ financial assets at the median. In 2016, this percentage rose by more than half to 67.9 percent.
In particular, the median share of financial assets that is represented by IA assets is the largest for families whose net worth is in the third quartile (73.1 percent), where the head is age 45-54 (76.9 percent), or who has a head with an education below a high school diploma (83.3 percent).