Plan participants are, by and large, continuing to save forretirement, with hardship withdrawals holding steady and allocationsstaying pretty much the same.

Those are some of the findings from the Investment CompanyInstitute’s research report “Defined Contribution PlanParticipants’ Activities, 2014,” which found that most people in aDC plan are continuing to contribute. Just 2.9 percent stoppeddoing so during 2014; that’s up just a bit from 2013’s 2.7percent.

DC plan assets make up 28 percent of all retirement assets, thereport said, totaling $6.8 trillion out of a total $24.7 trillionasset pool that includes not just DC plans but annuities, IRAs, and public and private defined benefitplans. Those DC assets also accounted for about a tenth ofhouseholds’ aggregate financial assets as of the end of 2014. In2013, DC plans totaled $6.3 trillion.

Just a few more people (3.6 percent) made withdrawals from theirDC plans in 2014 than did so in 2013 (3.5 percent), while the samepercentage—1.7 percent—had to resort to hardship withdrawals inboth years.

With stocks generally up for the year—the S&P 500 totalreturn index was up 13.7 percent for 2014—asset allocations wereunchanged for the great majority of participants. Just 10.5 percentchanged the allocations of their account balances, and 6.6 percentchanged the allocations of contributions.

In 2013, when the S&P 500 total return index wasconsiderably higher for the year at 32.4 percent, just slightlymore people changed allocations, with 10.7 percent making changesto their account balances. A greater percentage changed theallocation of their contributions in 2013 (7.4 percent) than did soin 2014 (6.6 percent).