The U.S. faces a retirement crisis.
We are living longer. Defined-benefit pensions are disappearing; the ones that exist are underfunded. Forty-five million Americans have no retirement plan at all. And nobody is seriously discussing solutions.
We urgently need a better retirement system, and luckily it's still possible to develop one.
It is a mark of advancing civilization that nations, employers and local governments now make commitments to provide security and comfort in old age, but those commitments are becoming more expensive. The increasing "risk" of living too long has made retirement liabilities unbearable for public and private employers alike.
Since actuaries first put people together to provide group annuities, the wonders of pooled risk have given millions of people a degree of security in retirement that had been unknown before the 20th century. Unfortunately, defined-benefit plans are essentially a thing of the past. Even states and municipalities are beginning to phase out those plans in favor of defined-contribution plans, such as 401(k)s.
Employers — governments and corporations — can't withstand the pressure of these long-term liabilities. So instead we put them all on the shoulders of individual retirees.
The problem with defined-contribution plans is that the individual retiree must function as chief investment officer, pension actuary and risk officer, but with no training in those areas. And each retiree must do this alone, with no pooling of risks or benefits.
There is a middle ground between defined benefits and defined contributions. It is called a collective defined contribution plan. The Netherlands and Denmark have CDCs, and while they aren't perfect, they offer some useful solutions to the challenge of retirement security. A CDC functions like a defined-benefit plan except that the employer is no longer on the hook for future liabilities. The employer would make the same contribution as in a defined-benefit plan.
The plan, however, would be managed by professionals whose goal is to provide a pension benefit equal to what a classic pension would offer. If the plan runs into problems, trustees would decide to change vesting schedules, decrease benefits or require greater employee (but not employer) contributions.
This allows the employer to make contributions, but to be free from long-term liability. It also provides advantages over every-man-for-himself IRAs or 401(k)s. Fees would be lower than with individual accounts since the assets in a collective plan would be larger and managed collectively. Professional managers should also do better than untrained individuals.
