(Newswire.net — May 1, 2015) — Social Security doesn’t cover it all, and when the time comes, one in every five Americans has run out of money due to healthcare expenses, a new survey conducted by Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI), found.
The researchers extended a survey conducted by Harris pool, a company that analyzes different aspects of American life. They showed in a 2014 study that every second examinee over the age of 50 believes he or she would not have enough money to “survive” in retirement.
A new report looking at the financial health of Americans confirms those results showing that over 20 percent of Americans who died at age 85 and older between 2010 and 2012 had no assets other than their house, and 12 percent had no assets left at all.
The report, conducted by Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI), found that close to 30 percent of those who died younger, between the ages of 50 and 64, had no assets left. Research found that nearly 10 percent of those age 85 and above had an outstanding debt other than mortgage debt, with the average amount of debt over $6,000.
“Singles who died relatively early were in much worse financial condition than couples,” research leader Sudipto Banerjee, said in the study.
The main cause for such grim results is the expensive health care that is not entirely covered by Social Security, and the fact the American healthcare costs are higher than anywhere else in the world, according to Vox. While many retirees have their financial health compromised because of major medical costs that drain savings, companion studies have found that others have done little to create savings in their lifetimes.
The EBRI research surveyed income, debt, home-ownership rates, net home equity and dependency on Social Security based on data from the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study. Reportedly, the study samples include 1,189 Americans who responded to a survey in 2010 and died before 2012.
An MIT study from 2012 lead by Economist James Poterba, found that many Americans die with “virtually no financial assets.”
“A lot of folks really don’t have much of a financial cushion by the time they get to the end,” Poterba told CNBC.
In his study, Poterba found that “46 percent of Americans had less than $10,000 in financial assets in the last year of their life.” The National Institute on Retirement Security found the average savings for most Americans was just $14,500.
“It’s very easy for people not to realize how expensive it is to provide a steady income stream and how much you need to build up,” Poterba told CNBC, ” adding that it is especially hard for younger households to “build up a nest by the time they reach 65.”