Excerpt: The private employer-sponsored defined benefit plan has had a good run of it, supporting two generations well in its goal of providing economic security for retirees. But the last 10 years have seen gradual though substantial decline in the number of employers sponsoring these plans, and in the percentage of employees being covered by these plans-now somewhere well south of 19% of the workforce is covered. The economic collapse has exacerbated the problem even further by exposing the weaknesses of the system, as the remaining DB plans are seeking funding relief from Congress. You can find many sound opinions which attempt to explain this demise, from over-regulation, to difficult statutory schemes, to the allure of defined contribution plans. If you step back, though, you can see that all of the reasons for the demise have a central theme: private employers are structurally ill-suited to bear the lifetime risk associated with providing this kind of benefit.  MORE >>