Americans saving for retirement aren’t letting the current tough economy deter them from saving more. That’s the conclusion of new survey research released this week by Fidelity Investments. The survey shows that, among current Individual Retirement Account owners, 60 percent have contributed to their IRAs for 2007 or plan to do so. And 32 percent of that group increased the amount invested for the year.

Overall participation in IRA plans still hovers around 40 percent of U.S. households, according to John Ragnoni, senior vice president of retirement products at Fidelity. “We were encouraged by these results,” Ragnoni told me. “It shows IRA owners are still engaged with the retirement savings process and trying to make the contributions that get them on the right path. But we certainly still need overall to get overall IRA ownership up.”

Unfortunately, the lowest rates of participation are among younger Americans who would benefit most from getting an early start on retirement portfolios. Just 32 percent of Americans in their thirties said they are participating in an IRA plan, compared with 57 percent of people in their sixties.

Fidelity surveyed 500 current IRA owners and another 500 people who haven’t opened accounts.

Details on the survey are here.

The Brookings Institution published a study this week projecting growth of older populations in the U.S. in the years ahead. Drawing primarily on U.S. Census data, the study has just about anything you want to know about the demographic Brookings dubs “pre-seniors”–Boomers age 55-64. Highlights:

• Pre-seniors will be the fastest-growing group in the U.S. through 2010, expanding nearly 50 percent in size.
• Fastest growth will occur in the Western U.S. in a diverse range of locations, ranging from larger cities like Las Vegas to smaller towns and counties.
• “Yuppie Senior” populations will surge in big cities like Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas and Atlanta, fueled by high net worth, professional occupations and interests
• Aging in place will be a key growth driver, especially in states like Georgia
• Suburbs in major cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles will become considerably older in their population mix. However, author William H. Frey acknowledges this trend could be affected in Boomers decide to leave the suburbs and move into cities.

Nothing too surprising here, but there’s a great deal of interesting detail, especially very detailed and useful charts projecting population growth nationally by city, county and state.. Get your copy here [pdf file].

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan urged Boomers to take more responsibility in planning for retirement, noting “we’ve never had such a huge group of individuals going into the [retirement] system at once and then living so long in their retirement years.” Speaking at a conference for financial planners, Greenspan said government would have increasing difficulty meeting its obligations in programs like Social Security and Medicare as the Boomer age wave hits. But he also predicted Boomers will get creative in planning for the years ahead, “determining the resources at their disposal, and ultimately making decisions to best prepare for their future.”

It’s not the first time Greenspan has worried out loud about the looming economic impact of aging. In a March speech to the Futures Industry Association, he described the retirement of the Boomer generation as a “seminal event” of the 21st Century.

Earlier discussion of the economics of aging is here.

The impact of an aging global population is well documented. The culprits fingered by forecasters usually include rising healthcare cost and shrinking labor pools. The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) worries about another issue: shrinking savings rates. A McKinsey study of Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States shows accelerating retirements will reduce savings rates, with a resulting enormous impact on household wealth. Solutions, McKinsey argues, are hard to come by: “MGI argues that the policy changes fashionable today—promoting immigration, raising the retirement age, and encouraging households to have more children—won’t mitigate the crisis. Yet a sustained effort to allocate capital more efficiently, boost savings rates, and close government deficits could.”

The Federal Reserve and others have pointed often to federal budget deficits and low household savings rate as a looming U.S. economic issue. In a speech last Fall, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke stressed the need to boost savings rates in the face of an aging population and rising entitlement costs:

Although some adverse effect of population aging on future per capita output and consumption is probably inevitable, actions that we take today, in both the public and the private spheres, have the potential to mitigate those effects. One such action would be to find ways to increase our national saving rate. If the extra savings were used to increase the nation’s capital stock–the quantity of plant and equipment available for use by workers–then future workers would be more productive, ameliorating the anticipated effects on per capita output and consumption.

Some legislators, by the way, don’t agree with McKinsey’s conclusion that delayed retirement won’t help mitigate the problem. A bill kicking around the U.S. Senate would reward employers who establish flexible work schedules for older employees with tax credits.

Earlier McKinsey work on this issue can be found in The McKinsey Quarterly.

More evidence of short-sighted corporate employment policies: the Federal Reserve predicts that the looming exodus of 50+ employees from the workforce will start putting the brakes on U.S. economic growth after 2010. Yet employers are doing little or nothing to retain older employers with more flexible work arrangements–and many continue to actively push out older workers due to their higher salary and benefit expense.

A Fed staff study projects economic growth after 2010 will be reduced by about one percentage point due to a labor force shortage associated with Boomer retirements. And that’s to say nothing about the harder-to-quantify brain drain some employers are worried about. And, of course, the worries about Boomer retirement costs sinking the Social Security system. What a disconnect. Boomers say they want to keep working past traditional retirement age, and U.S. economic health depends on it. When will employers wake up and start implementing policies aimed at keeping older workers on the job?

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), who chairs the Senate’s special committee on aging, is pushing legislation that would reward employers who establish flexible work schedules for older employees with tax credits. Other provisions of the bill include job training and a national clearinghouse for employers on hiring and retaining older workers. Kohl tells the Los Angeles Times: “We need to begin a national discussion to change the way we think about retirement. . “