The Retirement Benefits Crisis

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Co-authored with Carter M. Lyons, this article examines the deteriorating condition of defined-benefit pension plans in the United States — one leg of the traditional three-legged stool of retirement security alongside Social Security and personal savings. The authors find that while all three legs face structural pressure, the problems of DB plans are in principle the most tractable, given that they are primarily issues of funding discipline and plan design rather than demographic inevitability.

The article surveys the sources of the funding crisis — including prolonged low interest rates, equity market underperformance, and the spread of inadequate actuarial assumptions — and outlines a practical course of action for plan sponsors, legislators, and corporate boards. It was among the first practitioner-facing articles to frame the pension crisis as a solvable governance problem rather than an irreversible structural shift.