Modernizing the Defined-Benefit Pension System

Abstract

The defined–benefit pension system may not survive into the future absent changes in the current regulatory environment. A risk–based and anticipatory approach to evaluating pension trusts is proposed as a way to diminish the probability that large and insolvent companies will transfer their pension trusts to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. Because current difficulties are concentrated in a few industries, there will be severe problems in the future if the healthiest companies reduce their exposure to defined–benefit pensions.