(Bloomberg Business) — You can almost feel the shrug in French workers' response to questions about retirement. About 60 percent say they have no retirement plan, and just 8 percent of those with a plan have it written down. They have lots of company in Poland and the Netherlands, where the percentages are similar. The minority of global workers who are serious retirement planners—people who not only have a plan in mind but also say they have a written plan—are in Brazil, at 23 percent, as well as in the United States and India, both at 21 percent. 

While there is a looming retirement crisis in the United States, the percentage of U.S. workers saying they are habitual retirement savers tops the global average, according to a new survey of retirement readiness by the Aegon Center for Longevity and Retirement and the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. The survey covered 14,400 workers and 1,600 fully retired people in 15 countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia. In it, a global average of 39 percent say they are habitual savers, checking a box that reads, "I always make sure that I am saving for retirement." For U.S. workers it was 52 percent. Only China beat that, at 55 percent of those surveyed.

There's a gender gap among the globe's habitual savers. Forty-two percent of men make saving a habit; for women, it's 36 percent. Unsurprisingly, these savers are likely to be older, with 45 percent of the 55- to 64-year-old crowd being habitual savers. This group is far more likely than non-savers to have a backup plan in case of an unforeseen chronic illness or a layoff.