This study provides results for the seventh year (2015) of data available from the
EBRI IRA Database, with the last six years being contiguous. The results show the importance of being able to measure not only the unique IRA account balances, but also the combination of all IRAs an individual owns to determine the potential total retirement savings they have across all accounts. Indeed, the overall, cumulative IRA average balance was 26 percent larger than the unique IRA account balance. Therefore, databases that are not able to link accounts owned by the same individual within and across data providers will likely understate the total IRA assets owned by that individual, and thus the total retirement accumulations held by individuals. >> Download PDF