Retirement savings crisis worse for women
BUSINESS RECORD STAFF Oct 21, 2015 | 4:04 pm
1 min read time
224 wordsAll Latest News, Arts and CultureThe retirement savings crisis in the United States is disproportionately a women’s crisis, Sallie Krawcheck, CEO of Ellevest, reports on Fast Company. Ellevest is a digital investment platform for women that will launch soon.
On average, U.S. women retire with roughly two-thirds as much money as men, and they live five or more years longer.
As a result, the conventional solutions — raising taxes and cutting entitlements — are far from the only viable tools for bridging the savings shortfall. In fact, closing both the hotly debated gender pay gap and the much-less-discussed gender investing gap are equally crucial. And they have the shared benefit of growing the economy.
Keeping women in the workforce longer and closing the gender pay gap are both crucial undertakings, Krawcheck wrote. And it’s true that making progress on each of them goes some way toward closing the retirement savings gap as well. The more money women earn, the more they can pay into their 401(k)s and Social Security accounts over longer periods and at higher levels. Initiatives like Lean In and Know Your Value, among others, are doing great work on that front.
But the gender investing gap gets comparatively little attention. Men invest to a greater degree than women, and that’s in part because the investment industry as a whole does a better job serving men, in Krawcheck’s opinion.
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