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2014 Update of the EBRI IRA Database: IRA Balances, Contributions, Rollovers, Withdrawals, and Asset Allocation

Employee Benefit Research Institute: “This Issue Brief is the sixth annual cross-sectional analysis update of the EBRI IRA Database. It includes results on the distribution of individual retirement account (IRA) types and account balances, contributions, rollovers, withdrawals, and asset allocation in IRAs for 2014, the latest data available. The EBRI IRA Database is an ongoing project of the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) that collects data from IRA-plan administrators across the nation. For year-end 2014, it contains information on 26.7 million accounts owned by 21.1 million unique individuals, with total assets of $2.69 trillion. For accounts in the database, the IRA type, account balance, contributions made, rollovers transferred, and withdrawals taken during the year (if any), the asset allocation, and certain demographic characteristics of the account owner are included (among other items). This update shows the importance of being able to measure not only the unique IRA account balances, but also the combination of all IRAs an individual owns to determine the potential total retirement savings the individual has by aggregating their multiple IRA accounts. Indeed, the overall, cumulative IRA average balance per individual is 27 percent larger than the IRA balance per account. Thus, databases that are not able to link separate accounts owned by the same individual within and across data providers are likely to understate the total IRA assets owned by individuals, and thus the total retirement accumulations held by individuals.”

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