The U.S. isn’t the only country with retirement preparedness woes, and improvement isn’t coming fast enough.

According to a report from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies and the Aegon Center for Longevity and Retirement, although the score indicating retirement readiness has risen “slightly but unevenly” across countries, it’s still a low score and there’s plenty of work to be done to improve the situation.

The Aegon Retirement Readiness Index (ARRI) measures retirement preparedness on a scale from 1–10, with scores of 8 and higher considered to be high retirement readiness, scores of 6 to 7.9 as medium and less than 6 as low.

Since 2012, the score has come up; in the original nine countries (where readiness has been measured since 2012), the global index score increased from 5.2 to 5.5 in 2016.

Never mind globally, what about here in the U.S.?

Read: Retirement crisis? Do you really need to ask?

Well, sorry to disappoint, but while there’s been improvement, we still don’t rank any higher than medium. Still, that’s better than the score of 5.6 the U.S. got in 2012, putting us clearly at the low end of the scale; in 2016, we’ve moved up a category, at 6.7.

Across the world, people on average expect nearly half of their retirement income (46 percent) to come from government retirement benefits; in the U.S., that figure is only slightly lower, at 43 percent.

But most people aren’t saving enough, nor do they describe themselves as habitual savers; while 54 percent of U.S. workers do see themselves that way, only 32 percent think they’re on track to meet all their retirement needs.

That’s not surprising, considering that 21 percent view themselves as occasional savers “who save for retirement occasionally from time to time.”

Considering ways to improve the situation, 33 percent of U.S. workers said that the government should increase overall funding for Social Security-type benefits through raising taxes, without having to reduce the value of individual payments, while 32 percent vote for a retirement age that increases with life expectancy.

But considering the scarcity of jobs for older workers, and the reluctance of employers to help via flexible retirement (just 32 percent of U.S. workers said such an option is offered to them), just raising the retirement age won’t accomplish much.

Instant Insights /

Retirement readiness: Slow progress globally and in U.S.

More From HR Executive

Related Stories

Recommended For You