%0 Journal Article %A David Blanchett %A Paul D. Kaplan %T Beyond the Glide Path: The Drivers of Target-Date Fund Returns %D 2018 %R 10.3905/jor.2018.1.038 %J The Journal of Retirement %P jor.2018.1.038 %X 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. %U https://jor.pm-research.com/content/iijretire/early/2018/04/17/jor.2018.1.038.full.pdf