The Great Recession appears to have taken a greater toll on late boomers’ wealth than on earlier cohorts, according to Center for Retirement Research at Boston College in its What Happened to Late Boomers’ Retirement Wealth? brief.
“A decline in some wealth components had been expected as a result of the rise in Social Security’s Full Retirement Age and the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution plans,” wrote one of the brief’s co-authors, Anqi Chen, a senior research economist and assistant director of savings research. “But increasing 401(k)/IRA balances were predicted to offset the gap, since late boomers were the first generation where workers could have spent their whole career covered by a 401(k) plan.”
Their average earnings flattened out and then declined continuously thereafter, leaving them in their 50s with earnings generally well below thos