Mutual Funds and the Retirement Market

The retirement market in the United States consists of the following options: ^[6]

^[6] This discussion is based on "Mutual Funds and the Retirement Market in 2000," Fundamentals: Investment Company Institute Research in Brief , available on the ICI Web site at www.ici.org. Also included are data from the 2001 Fact Book , available on the same Web site.

• IRAs.

• Defined contribution and defined benefit plans.

• State and local government retirement funds.

• Fixed and variable annuities.

Total assets in retirement plans tripled in the 1990s, amounting to $12.3 trillion at the end of 2000. The fastest growing segment of the retirement market has been IRAs. The IRA share of the retirement market increased from 16 percent in 1990 to 23 percent in 2000.

Of the $12.3 trillion in U.S. retirement assets, mutual funds accounted for about 20 percent of this total at the end of 2000, a sharp increase from the five percent share that mutual funds held in 1990. Of the total assets held in mutual funds, about 35 percent is held through retirement accounts as of year end 2000. This figure has been approximately steady at about one third of mutual fund assets for several years .

In summary, the mutual fund share of total U.S. retirement assets is about one fifth, and mutual fund retirement assets constitute roughly one third of total mutual fund assets.