UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA SCHOOL OF LAW — Reforms to retirement plans over the past 25 years have disproportionately benefited the wealthy, according to new research by University of Virginia School of Law professor Michael Doran. That has happened, Doran said, despite lawmakers’ promises that the bipartisan legislation would improve retirement security for all Americans. In his article “The Great American Retirement Fraud,” Doran, a tax law expert and faculty affiliate of the Virginia Center for Tax Law, outlines what went wrong. Since a series of reforms costing tens of billions of dollars began in 1995, retirement savings have remained flat for middle-income households and even decreased for lower-income households after accounting for inflation. The percentage of all families holding retirement accounts increased by only 5.3 percentage points from 1995 to 2019. Only a small fraction of workers are now reaching the increased contribution limits — an expensive reform — with that fraction concentrated among higher-income earners, Doran reports.