Marketwatch

A troubling new study, Race and Retirement Insecurity in the U.S., reveals that America’s retirement crisis is particularly dire for blacks and Latinos.

“If nothing changes, the future for people of color is frightening,” author Nari Rhee, research manager for the nonprofit National Institute on Retirement Security , told me. Read the report here .

Rhee’s report comes on the heels of other recent surveys from financial services firms and consultants with their own scary stats documenting the general lack of retirement savings among blacks and Latinos.

Striking racial differences for retirement saving

Among the key findings in the Race and Retirement Insecurity report:

• Workers of color (Latinos especially) are much less likely than whites to be covered by employer-sponsored retirement plans. Only 38% of Latino employees age 25 to 64 and 54% of blacks work for organizations with such plans; 62% of white employees do. 
• Blacks and Latinos are far less likely to have dedicated retirement savings than white households of the same age. Roughly two-thirds of black working-age households (62%) and Latinos (69%) don’t have retirement accounts; 37% of white households don’t. 
• Three out of four black households age 25 to 64 and four in five Latino households have less than $10,000 in retirement savings. One in two white households are in that camp. 
• Among near-retirees, the average retirement savings balance among households of color ($30,000) is one-fourth that of white households ($120,000). “It wasn’t surprising to me that there was a pretty significant amount of racial disparity in retirement savings,” Rhee told me. “What was surprising was how much worse it was for older households.” 

One slight caveat about the study: It’s based on 2010 data, so the numbers don’t reflect the recent run-up in stock prices and housing values.

“Obviously, there’s been an improvement in retirement account values since then,” said Rhee, “and, with the economy growing, more people are saving.” But she said she doubted that updated numbers would be much higher for minority households in general, because so many of them are still not offered retirement plans at work.

That brings me to the key question: What’s behind the huge retirement savings gap between blacks, Latinos and whites?

It’s complicated. But here are five reasons based on the NIRS study and other surveys I’ve seen:

[white supremacy]