Roth IRA Owners by the Numbers

New data from the Investment Company Institute (ICI) shows 37.5 million US households — 27.8% — owned a Roth IRA in 2025. But the more revealing story is how differently Roth owners behave from Traditional IRA owners: they skew younger, they're nearly twice as likely to actively contribute (42% vs 23% in tax year 2024), and they rarely touch the money — only 6% took a withdrawal, versus 33% of Traditional owners, most of whom were forced out by required minimum distributions. The no-RMD advantage isn't just theory; it shows up in the behavior.

All figures: ICI, The Role of IRAs…, 2025 (mid-2025 surveys; tax-year-2024 activity).

Every spring, the Investment Company Institute — the national association of US mutual funds — publishes the most comprehensive household-level picture of who owns IRAs and what they do with them. The figures below come from its mid-2025 surveys and cover tax-year-2024 activity. We've pulled out what they reveal specifically about Roth IRA owners: who they are, how much they hold, and how their behavior differs from owners of Traditional IRAs.

Who owns a Roth IRA?

The single clearest pattern in IRA ownership is age — and it runs in opposite directions for the two account types. Traditional ownership climbs steadily with age, from 17% of households under 35 to 48% of those 65 or older. Roth ownership, by contrast, stays remarkably flat across the working years (28–30%) and is highest among the youngest households relative to Traditional: among households under 35, 28% own a Roth versus just 17% a Traditional (ICI, 2025). The Roth has quietly become the default first IRA for people early in their careers.

That fits the design of the accounts. A Roth rewards decades of tax-free compounding and carries an income limit to contribute, so it appeals to younger savers earlier in their earning years. Traditional IRAs, meanwhile, swell at older ages partly because they're the default destination for 401(k) rollovers at retirement. Roth ownership is also rising fast overall — from 24.9 million households in 2019 to 37.5 million in 2025.

Do Roth IRAs span the income spectrum?

Yes — though ownership climbs steadily with income. Even among households earning under $50,000, 9% own a Roth IRA; that rises to 21% at $50,000–$74,999, 37% at $100,000–$149,999, and 52% at $200,000 or more (ICI, 2025). Roth IRAs aren't only a high-earner vehicle — they're held across the income range, with the income limit on direct contributions (which the backdoor works around) biting only at the very top.

It's worth holding this next to the conversion figures later on. At the contribution stage, Roth ownership is broad — plenty of solidly middle-income households own one. The pronounced wealth-skew shows up at the conversion stage, because moving a large Traditional balance into a Roth is mostly something higher-asset households do. The same account can look mass-market or top-heavy depending on how the money got in — a distinction that's easy to miss when the two stages are lumped together.

How fast is Roth ownership growing?

Roth IRAs are the fastest-growing corner of the IRA world. When they launched in 1998 almost no household owned one; by 2000, 9.8 million did. The count has since nearly quadrupled — 14.5 million in 2005, 19.5 million in 2010, 24.9 million in 2019, and 37.5 million in 2025. Over the same quarter-century, Traditional IRA ownership grew far more slowly (30.5 million in 2000 to 43.9 million in 2025), much of that from 401(k) rollovers at retirement rather than fresh saving. The share of US households owning a Roth has climbed from under 10% to 27.8%.

That trajectory reflects a generational shift: Roth accounts barely existed when today's retirees were mid-career, but they've been available for the entire working life of younger savers — who, as the next section shows, have embraced them.

Which generations own Roth IRAs?

Splitting ownership by generation makes the Roth's youth-skew unmistakable. Among Gen Z households (the oldest now 28), 22% own a Roth versus just 13% a Traditional — the Roth is their default IRA. Millennials show the same pattern (31% Roth vs 22% Traditional), and Gen X is roughly even. Only among Baby Boomers and the Silent/GI generations does Traditional dominate — the cohorts who did most of their saving before Roths existed and who hold decades of rollover money. For essentially everyone under ~45, the Roth is now the more common IRA.

The direction of travel matters as much as the snapshot. As Baby Boomers draw down the Traditional balances that dominate their cohort and younger generations keep opening Roths first, the Roth share of IRA ownership should keep climbing. The account that barely existed a generation ago is on track to be the default IRA for the workers who follow.

Who is the typical Roth-IRA owner?

Pulling the demographics together, ICI's median Roth-owning household in 2025 looks like this: the survey respondent is 51 years old, the household earns roughly $137,500 a year, and 65% hold a college or postgraduate degree. Nearly three-quarters (74%) have someone working, and 64% are married or living with a partner. They are, in short, established mid-career savers — and they look markedly different from households that own no IRA at all, who have a median income of $60,000 and where just 26% hold a college degree. The gap is a reminder that IRA ownership still tracks closely with income and education — one of the access problems the new federal Saver's Match (starting in 2027) is meant to narrow.

Do Roth owners also have a 401(k)?

Overwhelmingly, yes — the Roth IRA is usually a supplement, not a substitute. 87% of Roth-owning households also have employer-plan coverage (a 401(k)-style defined-contribution account or a traditional pension), and 79% specifically have a defined-contribution account. That fits the sequencing many savers are taught to follow: capture the full employer match in a workplace plan first, then open a Roth IRA for its tax-free growth, broader investment menu, and the flexibility of no lifetime required distributions. Far from competing with workplace plans, Roth IRAs mostly sit alongside them as the second layer of a retirement stack.

Do Roth owners actually contribute?

Owning an account and feeding it are different things — and here the gap is striking. In tax year 2024, 42% of Roth-owning households made a contribution, versus just 23% of Traditional-owning households — nearly double the participation rate. Roth contributors also skew younger (a median age of 42, versus 52 for Traditional contributors) and are more likely to be working (91% employed).

Part of the explanation is structural: many Traditional IRAs are rollover accounts that owners no longer actively fund, while Roths are more often a deliberate, ongoing savings habit. Whatever the cause, the data paints Roth owners as the more engaged savers — consistent with our explainer on how a Roth works, where the whole point is steady contributions compounding tax-free.

Why don't all Roth owners contribute every year?

If 42% of Roth owners contributed in 2024, then 58% didn't — but the reasons aren't apathy. Among Roth-owning households that skipped a contribution, 42% point to savings capacity (24% simply had no extra money; 18% felt they were already saving enough through a workplace plan), 28% are retired and no longer saving, and 21% are ineligible — most often because their income exceeds the Roth limit, the group that turns to the backdoor Roth. Only 4% blamed confusion about the rules. Among non-retired owners specifically, 64% cite savings capacity — a reminder that contribution rates track household budgets far more than enthusiasm for the account.

Why do Roth owners rarely withdraw?

This is the most telling contrast in the data. A Roth IRA has no required minimum distributions during the owner's lifetime, so owners are never forced to pull money out. Traditional IRA owners are. And the behavior follows the rules almost exactly:

Traditional owners are more than five times as likely to be taking money out — and 70% of those withdrawals are made specifically to satisfy the IRS's required minimum distribution. Roth owners, with no such mandate, overwhelmingly let the account keep compounding: 94% took nothing. When Roth owners do withdraw, they tend to be older (median age 67) and doing it by choice — for living expenses or a home — not because a rule compelled them. This is the clearest real-world illustration of why the no-RMD feature matters: it's the difference between a forced drawdown and an account you control. (More on the rules in our Roth IRAs & RMDs guide.)

How much is in a typical Roth IRA?

Roth balances are still modest for most households — which makes sense for an account that skews young and is funded by capped annual contributions. The median household holds about $48,000 in its Roth IRAs, well below the $125,000 median for Traditional IRAs (which absorb large 401(k) rollovers at retirement). The spread is wide: 17% of Roth-owning households hold less than $10,000 in the account, while 14% have crossed $250,000. Those big balances belong to the early adopters and diligent converters who gave the account decades to compound — which is exactly the pattern the next finding makes explicit.

Does a Roth IRA grow more the longer you hold it?

Unsurprisingly for a tax-free-growth account, yes — and the gap is large. Median Roth IRA balances rise sharply with how long the account has been open: from about $20,000 for households owning a Roth less than 10 years, to $78,000 at 10–19 years, to $100,000 at 20 years or more (ICI, 2025). It's a concrete reminder of why starting the clock early matters — the longer the money compounds untouched, the more the tax-free wrapper is worth.

The mechanism is ordinary compounding given an extraordinary amount of time. A saver who puts in $7,000 a year and earns a 7% average annual return would have roughly $100,000 after 10 years, about $290,000 after 20, and around $660,000 after 30 — and in a Roth, every dollar of that growth is withdrawn tax-free in retirement. (Illustrative figures, not a projection.) The longer the runway, the more the tax-free wrapper is worth — which is why the median balance climbs so steeply with how long the account has been open.

What do people hold inside a Roth IRA?

A Roth IRA is a wrapper, not an investment — and owners mostly fill it with growth assets. 71% of Roth-owning households hold mutual funds (51% equity funds, 35% balanced funds) and 46% hold individual stocks. They're notably lighter on conservative or tax-inefficient products than Traditional owners: only 13% hold annuities (versus 25% of Traditional owners) and 11% hold bank or CD products (versus 20%). That tilt is logical — the Roth's advantage is decades of tax-free growth, so it rewards holding the highest-growth, most-otherwise-taxable assets inside it. Parking a low-yield CD in a Roth largely wastes the wrapper.

This is the practical case for being intentional about asset location — which investments you keep in which account. Because every dollar of growth and income inside a Roth ultimately comes out tax-free, the account does the most work when it holds your highest-expected-return, least-tax-efficient assets: broad stock funds, REITs, high-turnover holdings. Putting tax-exempt municipal bonds or a low-yield CD in a Roth, by contrast, spends a scarce tax shelter on income that wasn't going to be taxed much anyway. The data suggests most owners instinctively get this right — their Roths lean heavily toward equities.

Where do people hold their Roth IRAs?

Roth IRAs live across a wide range of providers. 74% of Roth-owning households work with an investment professional — 38% through a full-service brokerage and 25% through an independent financial-planning firm — while 19% use a mutual fund company directly, 16% hold a Roth at a bank or savings institution, and many use discount or online brokerages. Younger owners skew toward banks and app-based brokers (among under-35 Roth owners, 23% use a bank), consistent with the do-it-yourself, mobile-first way many of them opened their first account.

That split points to a quiet structural shift. Older owners came up through full-service brokerages and advisers; younger owners are far more likely to have opened their first Roth on a phone, at a discount or app-based broker, and to pick low-cost index funds themselves. It's cheaper and more self-directed — but it also means more first-time investors are making allocation decisions without a professional in the loop, which puts a premium on getting the basics right early.

How do Roth owners plan for retirement?

Roth owners tend to be deliberate. 65% say they have a strategy for managing income and assets in retirement, and 72% of those took three or more concrete steps to build it — reviewing asset allocation (73%), developing a retirement income plan (69%), estimating retirement expenses (66%), setting aside emergency funds (63%), and deciding when to claim Social Security (54%). Most get help: 77% consult a professional financial adviser (the primary source for 65%). But there's a sharp age split — older owners overwhelmingly lean on advisers (84% at 65 or older), while younger owners research far more on their own. Among under-35 Roth owners, 57% use websites and 60% turn to friends and family, with only 49% using an adviser — a snapshot of a generation learning to invest largely online.

How does this connect to Roth conversions?

One figure ties this back to our earlier research. ICI finds that 21% of Roth-owning households funded their Roth, at least in part, through a conversion from a Traditional IRA — and those converter households are notably wealthier: a median $941,000 in financial assets versus $400,000 for non-converters, with higher incomes too. That mirrors what we found looking at the historical record in The Backdoor Roth, by the Numbers: when the income limit on conversions was repealed in 2010, the surge in conversion dollars came overwhelmingly from high earners. Two datasets, fifteen years apart, pointing the same way — conversions skew toward higher-income, higher-wealth households.

The takeaway isn't that conversions are only for the wealthy — it's that converting is a fundamentally different decision from contributing. A contribution is a routine, capped annual habit open to most workers. A conversion is a deliberate, often multi-year tax move — paying income tax now to lock in tax-free growth later — and it tends to make sense for households with large pre-tax balances and the cash on hand to cover the tax bill. If you're weighing one, our guides to the tax cost of a conversion and the five-year rule on converted dollars cover the mechanics.

How should you read these numbers?

Two caveats keep the figures honest. First, these are household-weighted survey results, not tax-return data — they capture what a representative sample of US households reported in mid-2025, with contribution and withdrawal activity referring to tax year 2024. Second, we lead with medians rather than averages on purpose: a handful of very large accounts pulls the mean Roth balance ($118,000) well above the median ($48,000), so the median better describes a typical household. The numbers describe broad patterns across millions of households; they don't predict what any single account will do.

What it means

None of this is investment advice — it's a snapshot of how millions of households actually use these accounts. But three things stand out from the data:

• The Roth is winning the next generation. Among savers under 45 it's already the more commonly owned IRA, and it's the fastest-growing account type — 37.5 million households and counting.
• Time in the account is what builds the balance. Median Roth assets climb from about $20K under 10 years to $100K past 20 — the clearest case for opening one early and leaving it alone.
• The no-RMD freedom is real, and owners use it. 94% of Roth owners took nothing out in 2024; the account is overwhelmingly left to keep compounding, exactly as designed.

If you're weighing the two account types for your own situation, our Roth IRA vs. Traditional IRA comparison walks through the trade-offs in detail, and the Roth IRA basics guide covers how the account works from the ground up.