The World Will Never Retire

You can almost feel the shrug in French workers' responses to questions about retirement. About 60 percent say they have no retirement plan, and just 8 percent of those with a plan have it written down. They have lots of company in Poland and the Netherlands, where the percentages are similar. The minority of global workers who are serious retirement planners—people who not only have a plan in mind but also say they have a written plan—are in Brazil, at 23 percent, as well as in the U.S. and India, both at 21 percent.

While a retirement crisis looms in the U.S., the percentage of American workers saying they are habitual retirement savers tops the global average, according to a survey of retirement readiness by the Aegon Center for Longevity and Retirement and the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. The survey covered 14,400 workers and 1,600 fully retired people in 15 countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Australia. In it, a global average of 39 percent say they are habitual savers, having checked a box that reads: "I always make sure that I am saving for retirement." For U.S. workers, it was 52 percent. Only China beat that, at 55 percent of those surveyed.