25 Facts About Women's Retirement Outlook

Today’s women have achieved extraordinary progress in terms of educational attainment and career opportunities that were unimaginable half a century ago. Despite this progress, women continue to lag men when it comes to saving, investing, and planning for retirement.

A woman’s road to retirement is filled with financial obstacles, such as lower pay and having to take time out of the workforce for parenting and caregiving, which can negatively impact her long-term financial security. Women statistically live longer than men, further highlighting the importance of proactive retirement planning and saving.

25 Facts About Women's Retirement Outlook illustrates how women workers are juggling competing priorities and financially preparing for the future. It also offers gender-gap comparisons with men.

The report is based on findings from the 25th Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey, conducted in 2024, which includes 5,493 workers employed by for-profit companies. It marks the 20th consecutive year that our organization has published research that illustrates women’s retirement-related risks and action steps to help mitigate them.

Download the report 25 Facts About Women's Retirement Outlook and read the press release 25 Facts Highlight Women’s Risky Road to Retirement.

Key findings:

• Fear of outliving savings. 44% of women workers cite outliving their savings and investments as one of their greatest retirement fears, compared with 37% of men.
• Retirement savings gap. Women workers have saved a median of $56,000 in total household retirement accounts, far less than the $92,000 saved by men.
• Retirement strategy gap. Only 25% of women workers have a written financial strategy for retirement, compared with 33% of men.

For additional findings and recommendations, download the full report and read the press release.

Methodology

The analysis contained in 25 Facts About Women’s Retirement Outlook was prepared internally by the research team at Transamerica Institute and TCRS. It is based on an online survey conducted within the U.S. by The Harris Poll on behalf of Transamerica Institute and TCRS between September 11 and October 17, 2024, among a nationally representative sample of 10,009 adults and an oversample of 2,008 workers in a for-profit company employing one or more employees.

The data in this report and press release is shown for a subsample of 5,493 workers in a for-profit company employing one or more employees including 2,489 women and 2,960 men. Data was weighted where necessary for age by gender, race/ethnicity, region, education, marital status, household size, household income, and smoking status. Respondents were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in our surveys.

The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval and the worker sample data is accurate to within ±1.7 percentage points using a 95% confidence level. This credible interval will be wider among subsets of the surveyed population of interest. Percentages are rounded to the nearest whole percent.