TY - JOUR T1 - Beyond the Glide Path: <em>The Drivers of Target-Date Fund Returns</em> JF - The Journal of Retirement SP - 25 LP - 39 DO - 10.3905/jor.2018.1.038 VL - 5 IS - 4 AU - David Blanchett AU - Paul D. Kaplan Y1 - 2018/04/30 UR - https://pm-research.com/content/5/4/25.abstract N2 - The authors explore the relative importance of the three primary drivers of target-date fund (TDF) performance: equity (or market) exposures (which, across a series’ vintages, combine to form a glide path), style exposures (intrastock and intrabond allocations), and other investment selection decisions (e.g., manager selection and the active/passive decision, as well as any other residual risk exposures). They find that overall equity exposure drives only about 25% of the variation in returns across TDFs versus approximately 30% for style and 45% for selection, on average. Consequently, the analysis of the riskiness of a given TDF must be based on more than the overall weight given to equites.TOPICS: Retirement, analysis of individual factors/risk premia, risk management ER -