Inflation Spike Shakes Women’s Retirement Confidence

Inflation has shaken the retirement security and confidence of women more than men, new data shows.

Price spikes have driven 62% of women respondents to say they will likely retire later than they originally were planning or that they will not be able to retire, significantly higher than the 47% of men, the Nationwide In Plan Sponsor Survey Report finds.

Rising inflation was cited by nearly two-thirds of the women surveyed as the reason they would delay retirement. That compares to the 18% of women in the 2021 version of the survey who said they would delay retirement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, says Amelia Dunlap, vice president for retirement solutions marketing at Nationwide.

“We expected to see some impacts on retirement confidence [in the data],” she says. “When we revisited this in 2022, I thought that ’21 would have been an anomaly year, and so the fact that [retirement security and confidence for women] got worse from ’21 to ’22 was certainly a bit of an alarm or at least a surprising insight.”

Overall, the survey found that 40% of employees indicate that rising living costs have pushed their retirement age later than they had planned.

Nationwide also found 15% of women who are expecting to delay or cancel their retirement say they are doing so because of, either currently or in the past, financially supporting a family member or friend due to inflation.

“Inflation has made saving for retirement particularly difficult for many Americans, but we are seeing the effects among employer-sponsored retirement plan participants greatest felt by women,” Dunlap said in a press release. “In addition to having to reduce their retirement savings, women often have the responsibility of serving as the caretaker for loved ones.”

Additionally, the research showed 57% of women who are delaying or canceling retirement say it has negatively impacted their mental health, compared to 47% of men. 

The report also found that 56% of women feel worried when thinking about where they are currently with their retirement plan and financial investments, a 22-percentage point increase from 2021.

Women face several challenges to accumulating sufficient retirement assets in equal amounts to men and face greater obstacles to saving for retirement. Women earn less throughout their careers, spend more time out of the workforce, live longer and can expect to need more savings for a comfortable retirement than men.

A Government Accountability Office report found, though narrowed, that the gender pay gap persists, and previous research showed that among federal workers reporting their defined contributions plan contributions in dollars, women’s annual contributions were consistently around 30% lower than men’s contributions between 1998 and 2009.

Data for the Nationwide report was gathered by Edelman Data and Intelligence in an online survey administered from July 14 to August 5, 2022. The entire sample included 500 private employer plan sponsors or benefits decisionmakers; 100 public sector plan sponsors or benefits decisionmakers; 1,000 plan participants age 45 and older; and 100 plan participants between ages 35 and 44.