4/2/2015 – Half of Americans will see their standard of living fall in retirement (MarketWatch)

With roughly 10,000 boomers retiring every day, the U.S. retirement crisis is no longer an easily dismissed distant concern. Whether we choose to pay attention or not, American workers’ savings shortfall is a slow-moving hurricane that’s going to hit many of us where we live.

By some measures, Americans are less prepared than ever to retire comfortably. A recent brief by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College examined workers’ wealth-to-income ratios from 1983 to 2013. Tracked by the Federal Reserve, this metric plots workers’ accumulated assets over their income—the higher the ratio, the bigger their financial cushion.

Researchers found that workers’ wealth-to-income trajectory has held steady over the 30 years ending in 2013 when various factors, including the drop in workers covered by pensions, meant it needed to increase in order for workers not to lose ground. “They should have more wealth to compensate, and they don’t,” said Anthony Webb, senior research economist at the Center for Retirement Research.

Read the full article at MarketWatch.