Millennials marry later than other generations, thanks in part to high debt levels and low funds available to afford their own homes and start families. But since marriage also tends to push partners into higher gear when it comes to saving for homes, researchers wondered if it might also push them farther along the path of saving for retirement — and how delayed marriage might be reducing the amount millennials are saving for retirement if they wait till marriage to save or to save more.

The results of a new brief from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College find that, when controlling for marriage as the determining factor for retirement savings, people do increase both their participation in and contributions to retirement accounts after they marry. However, the effect is small.

Men tend to be triggered more by marriage than women into saving; in fact, men have lower plan participation rates before marriage than they do afterward and actually end up, after marriage, participating at the same rate as women.

But when it comes to the contribution amount, the opposite is true. After marriage, the study finds, women boost their contribution rates by 0.8 percent, while men only increase their contributions by 0.3 percent.

When calculating the effect a delayed marriage may have on participation and contribution, researchers adjusted for a five-year delay in marriage and what effect such a delay would subsequently have on retirement asset accumulation.

The report says, “The effect of delay, while statistically significant in the regression, is small—a 3.1-percent decline in accumulated assets for men and a 3.4-percent decline for women.”

It concludes that delayed marriage could have a problematic effect on saving for home ownership, but is unlikely to have a substantial negative effect on retirement savings.

It adds that plan features such as automatic enrollment and automatic escalation can help steer people into retirement savings before the issue of marriage is even approached, and better financial education could get people thinking about retirement savings earlier than they do now.

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Does delaying marriage affect retirement saving for better or for worse?

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