The Aspen Institute

Employer-sponsored pensions are an important source of retirement income and often make the difference between having a comfortable retirement and just scraping by. This publication, written in collaboration with the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, examines the current state of private pensions in America and finds that total pension coverage has remained stagnant at only about half of all workers — even though the nature of the coverage is shifting from traditional defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans. At the same time, this shift in coverage means that the amount of income that individuals will receive from pension plans in the future is uncertain.