Financial Viability and Retirement Assets: A Look at Small Business Owners and Private Sector Workers.

摘要

Ones status as a business owner or wage and salary worker may have implications for income security during retirement. Compared with private wage and salary workers, business owners may have differential patterns of asset accumulation based on their business experience, participation in individual-based retirement plans, or as a result of differential coverage of owners and workers by employer-sponsored retirement benefits during their careers. This study uses the Census Bureaus 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to compare the individual account retirement plan assets held by business owners and private sector workers. It carefully examines the behavior of small business owners who earn a high percentage of their income and hold a high percentage of their net worth in business income and assets, respectively. It also analyzes the retirement assets of business owners and private sector workers who have underwater residential mortgages and compares them with owners and workers who have positive mortgage equity.