A retirement crisis that sees most Americans poorly, if at all, financially prepared to leave the workplace could see improvement if default savings rates were pushed higher — not just a little, but a lot higher.

So says new research from Voya Financial's Voya Behavioral Finance Institute for Innovation. In a working paper titled "How Do Consumers Respond When Default Options Push the Envelope?" The Institute, in conjunction with behavioral scientists from UCLA, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, examined the impact to retirement plan enrollment and savings behavior when individuals were shown savings rates above traditionally displayed levels.

While auto features in retirement plans, such as auto enrollment and auto escalation of contributions, have proved helpful in boosting both participation and savings rates, the study indicates that they could be a lot more so if savings rates were set higher. Many plans set the default contribution rate at 3%, or even lower, and few go higher than six. And that's far from adequate to prepare someone for retirement.