Are people really this clueless?

The Buffalo News: Business:

"Most Americans — regardless of gender — lack the basics they need to accumulate the money that will be essential for retirement, but more women than men are missing some of the nuts and bolts, according to research by Dartmouth College professor Annamaria Lusardi.

In surveys of individuals she found that only 55 percent of workers knew that government bonds provide a lower rate of return over 20 years than the stock market, on average.

Only 52 percent knew that holding a single stock was significantly more dangerous than investing in a stock mutual fund."

And only half of people over 50 understood two critical facts — that inflation undermines the buying power of a person’s savings, and that the compounding effect of your investment return (or interest rate) makes a tremendous difference in the money you will accumulate over many years."