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End-of-Life Finances for Older Americans and The Use of “Big Data” in Employee Benefits

New research by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) shows that a large percentage of individuals who died recently had little or no assets. Those who died relatively younger were even more likely to be in this situation. “Households which lost family members at relatively younger ages were also the households with lower asset holdings and lower income,” said Sudipto Banerjee, EBRI research associate and author of the study. “Singles who died relatively early were in much worse financial condition than couples.” Among the major findings in the EBRI report:
  • For those who died at age 85 or above, 20.6 percent had no non-housing assets and 12.2 percent had no assets left.
  • Among singles who died at or above age 85, 24.6 percent had no non-housing assets left and 16.7 percent had no assets left.
  • Those who died at earlier ages were generally worse off financially: 29.8 percent of households which lost a member between ages 50 and 64 had no assets left.
  • People who died earlier also had significantly lower household income than households with all surviving members.
  • Many workers are already seeing the results of this trend, such as the rapidly growing use of electronic medical records and their ability to access their own health records online.
  • See also Measured Matters: The Use of “Big Data” in Employee Benefits – This article summarizes the presentations and discussion at the Dec. 11, 2014, EBRI policy forum held in Washington, DC, on the topic “Measured Matters: The Use of ‘Big Data’ in Employee Benefits:” the use of massive amounts of data and computer-driven data analytics to determine how people behave when it comes to health and retirement plans, which programs work or do not, and how to get better results at lower cost.”

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