Seniors who claim to be the victims of financial fraud say it has made them more willing to make risky investments, says a study reported Friday at the Retirement Research Consortium annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

But the study was not able to determine if the reason was because the fraud had whetted the investors’ appetite for risk or if their motivation was to recoup losses from the scam, said one of the researchers, DePaul University Assistant Finance Professor Keith Jack Gamble.

He noted, however, that people were only willing to risk so much for greater gains. “There was a limit to the increase in willingness to take on risk. People were more willing to risk 10 percent of income to double their income in a year than they were willing to risk 20 percent to double their income,” Gamble said.

The study polled 800 adults aged 60 and over in Chicago.

Also at the two-day forum, researchers from the University of Southern California and the University of Quebec urged greater efforts to tell people that life expectancy increases mean they need to save more for retirement than their parents did.

“Better informing individuals about how working longer can substantially improve their retirement prospects may also be an effective means of extending their work and retirement plans,” the academics noted.

John Sabelhaus, an economist in charge of the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finance, told the gathering that early withdrawals from retirement plans didn’t surge during the recession as had been expected.

Longevity of high-income women over their less affluent peers is increasing, Brookings Institution researchers said. Among the causes they gave were poor heart health and poor diet for lower-income women.

The Washington, D.C., event was co-sponsored by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, the Michigan Retirement Research Center and the National Bureau of Economic Research.