May 22 (Bloomberg) — Dee Dix hesitated before she decided to retire in 2012.

"I thought, do we have enough money? How much do we need?" the 66-year-old former insurance analyst said from her home in Fort Myers, Florida. "I was a little bit leery."

Clinching the decision was profit earned on stock investments during a five-year bull market that has restored $14 trillion to U.S. equity values. Dix is among millions of baby boomers whose retirement has helped push the participation rate of working Americans to lows not seen since the 1970s.

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