Individual Retirement Account - Statistics

Statistics

Detailed statistics on IRAs have been collected by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, in its EBRI IRA Database (Center for Research on IRAs), and various analyzes performed. An overview is given in (Copeland 2010). Some highlights from the 2008 data follow:

• The average and median IRA account balance was $54,863 and $15,756, respectively, while the average and median IRA individual balance (all accounts from the same person combined) was $69,498 and $20,046. The average is significantly higher than the median (over three times higher), reflecting significant positive skew – very large balances increase the average.
  • Average and median balances increased with age, reaching a maximum in the 65–69 age group, before leveling off for 70 and over.
• Rollovers overwhelm contributions – the overwhelming majority of IRA contributions, in dollar terms, were from rollovers, rather than new contributions – over 10 times as much is added to IRAs from rollovers than new contributions.
  • While many rollovers were small (28.5% were less than $5,000, and 53.1% were less than $25,000), a significant number of rollovers were quite large, with 20.2% being more than $100,000.
• IRAs were divided by type as 33.6% traditional IRAs, 33.4% rollover IRAs (combined with the traditional IRAs, 67 percent), 23.4% Roth IRAs, and 9.6% SEPs and SIMPLEs.
• Excluding SEPs and SIMPLEs (i.e., concerning traditional, rollover, and Roth IRAs), 15.1% of individuals holding an IRA contributed to one. The percentage was much higher for Roth IRAs: 7.2% of owners of traditional or rollover IRAs (same for contribution purposes) contributed, while 29.5% of owners of Roth IRAs contributed.
• Contributions are concentrated at the maximum amount – of those contributing to an IRA, approximately 40% contributed the maximum (whether contributing to traditional or Roth), and 46.7% contributed close to the maximum (in the $5,000–$6,000 range).