Switch to Defined Contribution Pensions Could Leave Retirees Short

许多美国公共养老基金正在努力平衡长期需求，以防止国家预算和股票和债券等传统投资的绩效。在一些意味着将新员工纳入的州定义的缴费计划in an effort to limit pension obligations. But doing so can leave retirees short of income, according to a recent study from the University of California, Berkeley. Still, unfunded liabilities in public pension funds keep growing. Rebalancing portfolios toward specific tactical themes instead of simply trying to hit target allocations might help to solve the problem.

In their学习经理百合Rhee退休安全食物ram at the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education, and William Fornia, founder and president of Pension Trustee Advisors, a Centennial, Colorado–based consulting firm for public pension plans, modeled how retirement income would shake out for teachers on three types of pension: the current defined benefit offering from the $186 billion California State Teachers’ Retirement System for hires since 2013, an idealized 401(k) plan and a现金余额计划with guaranteed 7 percent annual interest on contributions. Cash balance plans give retirees the choice of taking a lump sum and forgoing interest, or spreading out that payment through annuities.

Focusing on how long teachers worked before receiving benefits was crucial, Rhee contends. “There has been a bit of a bait and switch in the studies that look at defined benefit plans and compare them to 401(k) plans because they only look at new-hire attrition, not the tenure pattern of the teaching workforce and what benefits they receive at the end,” she says.

CALSTRS的养老金计划奖励留在最长 - 20至30年的教师。当Rhee看待401（k）计划中获得的退休收入时，她发现老年教师必须工作超过30年，因为他们不会有钱退休。

Why are 401(k) plans a bust for teachers? Blame the asset mix. The Berkeley study shows that 401(k)-based retirement income varies among participants over the life of an account because retail investments in public equities and fixed income fluctuate with market conditions. According to its models, teachers on the idealized 401(k) plan would either end up with income exceeding what they put in by at least one third or would face a shortfall of one third or more. Participants can't control which group they fall into because everything hinges on the state of the market when they retire. Even with the cash balance plan delivering a favorable interest rate of 7 percent, benefits in those plans are front-loaded, so teachers receive less retirement income than those in the CalSTRS plan at the time of retirement.

“What we see with目标日期基金那which serve as common default options in 401(k) plans, is that the investments get more conservative nearer to retirement,” Rhee says. But that also means that returns get lower at the exact point when there’s the most money in the account, she explains. “Defined benefit plans don’t work that way; they are able to maintain a steady asset allocation.”

除了员工捐款外，界定的福利养老金在大型和多样化的投资中运行。但是，401（k）计划的参与者占私募股权，机会主义信贷战略，对冲基金和私人房地产等高性能领域，所有这些都是所有这些，这些地区通常要求投资者占用数百万美元。因此，即使员工经常贡献，他们也没有得到最高的回报，并且弥补任何损失更难。

在西萨克拉门托的Calstrs，公共和私人投资之间的绩效差异是鲜明的。在2015年第三季度，基金的固定收益组合将其基准落后于16个基点，美国公共股票与美国指数一起持续下跌。截至去年9月，CALSTRS的私募股权投资组合，占资产总额的9.9％，自成立以来均为13.21％的净净返回率。在单一资产类别中，这些返回DWARF理想化的401（k）计划，其中投资组合收入和返回的返回因教师年龄而异。截至2015年6月30日止财政年度，替代方案占大量CALSTR的积极回报，总收益率为4.8％。

加利福尼亚州La Jolla的合作伙伴Jay Rose，养老金咨询公司Stepstone Group办公室表示，公共养老金分配者正在成为建设投资组合的掌握，但它需要时间到达那里。投资委员会必须学会投资成果，而不仅仅是分配目标，他指出：“通常你看到员工改变的投资组合，所以有一个混合的暴露和相应的GP关系袋，然后你看到卖的机构何时卖it’s uneconomical.” Focusing on themes relevant to current market conditions — increasing exposure to distressed debt, for example — is a way to avoid uneconomic deals or, in the case of private equity, getting too overweight in a certain vintage year, Rose adds.

这些课程已经润滑养老金等养老基金，但它们仍然无法达到401（k）投资者。伯克利的RAEE说，监督裁定缴费计划的提案也必须重点关注结果。“特别是，如果他们想要转移到这些计划，公共雇主将真正需要查看他们正在创造的内容;401（k）的可移植性根本无法解决这些计划的其他不安全感，“她解释道。“如果您有大量无法退休或需要其他援助的人，那些不安全感仍然会对国家预算构成风险。”

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