Study: What’s causing the gap in retirement savings between women and men?

Despite making great strides towards achieving gender equality over the past decade, data shows that women still earn an estimated 82 cents for every dollar men make. Not only does that mean women likely earn less in their lifetimes, they also have less income to put towards retirement.

How does the gender pay gap translate to retirement savings and financial literacy?

We recently conducted a survey to better understand many of these questions.¹ The results were telling: Not only do women save less for retirement, but they also identify having more negative feelings towards their financial future than men.

While these statistics seem discouraging, our research shows that offering a 401(k) can significantly improve these outcomes. In fact, we found that individuals with an employer-sponsored retirement benefit are 2.5 times as likely to save for retirement.

Here's even more on what we found:

Today nearly half of U.S. workers don’t have access to a retirement plan. Our research shows that providing employees with access to retirement benefits can have far-reaching impacts beyond attracting and retaining top talent; it can meaningfully improve their long-term financial wellness and enable them to better plan for a retirement they can look forward to.