Adding the projected cost of long term care to retirement risk calculations leads to a significant increase in risk estimates.
Researchers come to that conclusion in a new study released by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston college.
The researchers have added long term care cost estimates to their National Retirement Risk Index.
Adding the LTC component increased the risk index to 64%, from 61%, the researchers report.
The new index means that, according to the researchers' calculations, 64% of households appear to be at risk of being unable to main pre-retirement non-health care consumption after retirement, the researchers write in the study.
When the researchers began adding projected acute health care costs to the index in February 2008, that increased the index to 61%, from 44%.