A large percentage of people dying lately have had few to no assets to their names when they passed.
So says research from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, which also found that the younger people were when they died, the more likely they were to die broke.
"Households which lost family members at relatively younger ages were also the households with lower asset holdings and lower income," Sudipto Banerjee, EBRI research associate and author of the study, said in a statement. "Singles who died relatively early were in much worse financial condition than couples."
Among the study's findings were that, among those who died at age 85 or older, 20.6% had no non-housing assets and 12.2% had no assets at all. Singles in the same age group were in even more dire financial condition, with 24.6% having nothing but housing assets and 16.7% having none at all—and 9.1% had outstanding debt other than mortgage debt. That debt averaged $6,368.
Among those dying at 85 and older, the average net equity left in their primary residence was $141,147 and $83,471 for couple and single households, respectively.
