1 in 4 Americans Have No Plans to Retire, Poll Finds

By VOA News

Nearly one in every four Americans say they never plan to retire.

An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey released Sunday found 23% of Americans have no plans to stop working.

Another 23% say they expect to have to work well beyond their 65th birthday.  

Financial instability is the major reason for Americans to delay retirement, the poll found.

«The average retirement age that we see in the data has gone up a little bit, but it hasn’t gone up that much,» says Anqi Chen, assistant director of  research at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. «So people have to live in retirement much longer, and they may not have enough assets to support themselves in retirement.»

When asked how comfortable they feel about retirement, just 14% of those under age 50 and 29% of those over age 50 felt «extremely or very prepared,» for retirement. About another 4 in 10 older adults say they do feel somewhat prepared, while just about one-third feel unprepared. By comparison, 56% of younger adults say they don’t feel prepared for retirement.

About 25% of those who had already retired said they didn’t feel prepared to stop working, according to the poll. Just 38% of fully retired individuals said they «felt very or extremely prepared.»

U.S. government data shows about 1 in 5 people age 65 and older were working or searching for a job in June, the AP reports.