Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation

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Although the number of traditional defined benefit plans—the old fashioned type of pension plan that promised employees a formula-derived annuity benefit at retirement age—is on the decline, these plans are not gone completely and remain critically important for the retirement security of American workers and retirees. In the private sector, there are approximately 10 million participants in multiemployer pension plans covered by defined benefit plans. Public employees (including employees of public universities) also are often covered by defined benefit plan arrangements. So, too, are employees of many church-affiliated entities, such as hospitals, universities, and nursing homes.  And the biggest defined benefit plan of all is Social Security, which provides a basic retirement annuity for most working Americans. In many cases, these plans face significant resource issues, suggesting that they may be unable to pay all of their participants all of the benefits they have promised to pay them. In connection with the prospect of this occurrence, the panelists will discuss the adequacy of the legal structures under which these plans operate to protect participants from reductions in benefits, and also will consider the intergenerational equity and political concerns raised by such underfunded defined benefit systems.