Sec. 2. Findings

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Congress finds the following: Approximately 29 percent of households headed by individuals aged 55 through 74 have no defined benefit plan or retirement savings, according to 2016 data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. Approximately 34 percent of the private sector workforce does not have access to a retirement plan at the workplace, and only half of the workforce actually participates in a retirement plan. Women’s retirement preparedness often lags significantly behind their male counterparts, resulting in the median retirement income for women in 2014 being just 54 percent of men’s retirement income.

Women are 1.5 times as likely as men to live in poverty after age 65. Women make up 2/3 of low-wage workers, even though they comprise less than half of all workers, and low-wage workers are less likely than other workers to participate in a retirement plan at work. The cost impact on women who leave the workforce early to become caregivers, in terms of lost wages and Social Security benefits, equals $324,044 in lost retirement savings. Just one in 5 part-time workers who work a full year are eligible for a retirement plan, and women are almost twice as likely to work part-time as men.

While traditional defined benefit retirement plans have spousal protections, defined contribution retirement plans, which have become increasingly common, currently provide no similar spousal protections. Every year more than 1,200,000 couples get divorced in the United States. After the family home, retirement savings are the largest asset that must be divided at divorce. While fees and expenses associated with retirement plans have been in decline, participants have seen direct charges for processing qualified domestic relations orders increase significantly.