Release: 529 Plan Program Statistics

March 30, 2022

529 Plan Data, December 2021

Washington, DC, March 30, 2022 — The combined assets of all Section 529 plans—“qualified tuition programs” designed to help save for higher education expenses—were $480.4 billion at the end of December 2021, an increase of 13.0 percent since year-end 2020. At the end of December 2021, savings plans held $452.6 billion, while prepaid plans accounted for another $27.8 billion.

529 Plan Assets
Billions of dollars, end-of-period, 2006–2021

Note: Data were estimated for a few individual state observations in the early years in order to construct a continuous time series.

Sources: Investment Company Institute and College Savings Plans Network

Number of Section 529 Plan Accounts

The number of Section 529 plan accounts was 15.7 million at the end of December 2021, an increase of 5.7 percent since year-end 2020. There were 14.7 million savings plan accounts and 0.9 million prepaid plan accounts at the end of December 2021.

529 Plan Accounts
Millions of accounts/contracts, end-of-period, 2006–2021

Note: A single beneficiary may have more than one account. Starting in 2005, the survey requests number of unique beneficiaries where possible. Accounts data collected prior to 2009 cannot be compared to newer data due to a change in the data collection methodology.