Another theory is that people have become more aware of retirement issues because of the proliferation of employee-managed retirement plans. As people become more aware, they also can grow more concerned, says Devine.

He notes that although the percentage of workers saving for retirement is down this year, it is still higher than at any other time during the 1990s, when the percentages were in the 50% to 70% area. "As we get more of those folks into systems, they become stake holders in their own retirement," he says.

The survey also found that despite more pessimism about retirement in general, faith in Social Security and Medicare continues to grow. Thirty-four percent say they are confident Social Security will continue to provide benefits of equal value to the benefits received today, up from 28% a year ago. Thirty-nine percent expressed the same confidence about Medicare, up from 35% in 2000. These percentages have been rising since 1995, according to the report.

The survey consisted of telephone interviews with 1,000 workers and retirees in January and February 2001. In addition to EBRI, it was co-sponsored by the American Savings Education Council and Mathew Greenwald & Associates, a Washington D.C.-based market-research firm.

Will Retirement Ceilings Be Lifted?

The Senate Finance Committee and staffers were working around the clock to prepare their tax-cut bill for a floor vote scheduled for mid-May. The bad news? The retirement-plan stimulus package approved overwhelmingly by the House on May 2 was moving more slowly through the Senate than was hoped.

Many thought the retirement package, which would raise maximum annual contributions on IRAs and retirement plans, would be part of the tax-cut bill, but that hadn‚t happened. Financial-services lobbyists say the retirement initiative could be introduced as an amendment when the tax-cut package gets to the Senate floor, or it could be considered separately. "The thing is just so damn popular, it will have to fly, even if it‚s not in the Senate Finance Committee mark," says American Council of Life Insurance spokesman Jack Dolan.

The retirement package would cost $52 billion over 10 years, compared with President Bush‚s $1.25 trillion tax-cut plan, and would ratchet up the amount Americans can save in their IRAs from $2,000 to $5,000 annually over the next three years. It also would raise maximum annual retirement-plan contributions from $10,500 to $15,000 over five years, increase plan portability for workers and reduce plan-vesting periods to three years from the current five years.

A similar bill cleared the House last year but was waylaid in the Senate when former President Clinton announced his opposition. The Bush White House is supporting this bill.

Veteran advisor Eileen M. Sharkey, chairman of Sharkey, Howes & Javer in Denver, says the change is "long-overdue recognition that some people will be retired longer than they work."

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