Despite uncertainty and the market volatility it creates, Gallup finds what it calls “non-retired Americans” to be more confident now than a year ago in the belief that they’ll have enough money to live comfortably in retirement.
The 54 percent who currently believe this is up from 48 percent in April 2016 and is the highest in about a decade, and contradicts other recent reports.
“Younger non-retirees are much more confident than older non-retirees about retirement,” the polling organization reports. “Almost two-thirds of U.S. adults aged 18 to 29 think they will have enough money to live comfortably, compared with about half of those aged 30 to 49 or 50 to 64. Younger non-retirees may assume they have plenty of time to save for retirement, while their older counterparts may recognize that the window of opportunity is closing for them to achieve their financial targets.”
Non-retirees’ outlook for retirement is a bit less positive today than when Gallup first asked this question in 2002, it adds. That year, 59 percent thought they would have enough money to live comfortably. It remained high until 2005, when the belief dropped to 53 percent.
By 2008, a few months into the Great Recession, non-retirees’ expectations for a comfortable retirement fell to 46 percent and then continued declining until reaching a low of 38 percent in 2012. Plummeting property and stock values in the country at this time were no doubt a contributing factor, along with the decline in Americans’ economic confidence more generally.
A separate question asking all Americans—retired and non-retired—if they are worried about not having enough money for retirement also shows less concern this year. Fifty-four percent are now “very” or “moderately” worried about this, down from 64 percent last year. This is the lowest this measure has been since 2004.
“Americans feel less concerned about their retirement security than they have in some time,” Gallup concludes. “That is evident both in non-retirees’ outlook for living comfortably during their retirement and in all Americans’ confidence that they will have enough money once they stop working.”