Controversial Paper Reignites Debate over Pension Structure

来自Laura和John Arnold基金会的一篇论文和TIAA-CREF研究所引发了新鲜的艺术退休计划的基本要素。标题为“同等福利的等效费用：公共部门的主要直流计划”，并由Josh McGee撰写的Arnold基金会公共责任副总裁，以及TIAA-CREF研究所的高级经济学家Paul Yakoboski，这篇论文是最新的在长期肆虐的福利计划与定义贡献计划战斗中射击船头。但是对于那些尚未为自己审查论文的人而言，还有一些坏消息：从研究所的网站上毫无愉快地吹嘘。

Ever since the 2008–’09 financial crisis, defenders of public defined benefit plans have been coping with a hailstorm of criticism from well-funded pension detractors. The crisis, which exposed the precarious financial position of some public funds, breathed new life into pension critics’ mission to weaken, if not destroy, the traditional retirement benefits of public employees like firefighters and teachers.

这些养老金批评者辅助标出se by two other groups: private sector workers who suddenly found themselves without work in the crisis (or, at the least, with depleted 401(k) retirement savings accounts) and began to question why the teacher next door should receive pensions while they had none; and the mutual fund industry, which has gained enormously from the growth in 401(k) plans.

McGee与纽约市 - 总部的TIAA-CREF研究所，巨型资产经理的研究部门，争论国家退休保安（NIRS）的2008年研究所，发现确定了确定的贡献，401（k）- 储蓄计划为传统养老金提供劣势。TIAA-CREF论文认为，最佳实践界定的缴费退休计划可以向传统界定的福利养老金提供卓越的结果。在资产5420亿美元的资产中，TIAA-CREF一直为高等教育市场提供近100年的退休计划。

McGee and Yakoboski agree that traditional 401(k), defined contribution plans are unable to compete with the cost advantages of defined benefit plans. They assert that there are best-practice defined contribution plans that were not described in the 2008 NIRS study but that provide “a viable, sustainable option for providing retirement security to workers.” The authors contend that the NIRS study, in leaving out best-practice defined contribution plans, “can be inappropriate and misleading when the dominant design looks very little like the ideal and does not accomplish the core aim of retirement income security.” The TIAA-CREF brief provides a list of seven best practices that include mandatory participation or automatic enrollment; adequate contribution rates; and a limited set of professionally managed, low-cost, pooled investments. (Yakoboski, at first willing to speak with亚博赞助欧冠那withdrew his participation in this article without explanation.)

NIRS执行董事Diane Oakley很快回应最近对其组织学习的攻击。“在DC中获得最佳实践的唯一方法就是带走员工的灵活性和选择，”她说。但这是一个矛盾，她指出，因为这些计划都是关于员工从投资期权菜单中选择，监测并控制他们的捐款金额和提款。“最佳实践并不是存在，”奥克利补充道。

To further her case, Oakley points to defined benefit plans’ higher investment returns, ability to maintain an optimally balanced investment portfolio for a wide age cohort and pooling longevity risks with large numbers of individual participants.

与其他养老金观察者的TIAA-CREF纸的反应已被混合。戴维·麦格兰，美国工人项目董事，基于中等自由主义华盛顿州的智库坦克中心，发表了一篇论文，“美国退休储蓄可能会好得多，”与他的大帽同事高级罗兰戴维斯于2013年8月。在他们认为，像401（k）S这样的个人储蓄车辆是“不必要的昂贵和不必要的风险。”他们的解决方案：一种新的养老金模型，如中心的建议安全，可访问，灵活，有效（安全）退休计划，这些计划结合了定义的福利和定义贡献计划的最佳元素。

“There are definitely best practices in DC plans, and most can be improved to provide better outcomes,” notes Madland. “But even with the improvements, you don’t get the defined benefit quality.” He questions why the TIAA-CREF paper lacks any illustration of how its plan achieves a good retirement benefit outcome. He also asks why someone would write this kind of paper. His conclusion: “Some people don’t like social insurance, and they believe people shouldn’t have it.”

社会保险的长期倡导者，Teresa Ghilarducci，Schwartz经济政策经济政策分析中心的经济学教授，评论，评论，“美国有许多创新，因此任何变得更像DB计划的DC计划更好，因为DB模型更好。“Ghilarducci曾设计了她自己的政府管理的保障退休账户计划，以增加社会保障，这是过去十年推动了美国劳动力的更好的退休福利。虽然她指出，但必须以减少雇主风险暴露的方式构建定义的福利计划 - 明确缴费计划的明显优势 - 她认为界定的福利计划作为旨在在任何新的养老金模型中的金标准。“在DB中有很多方法可以做到这一点，”她解释道。

Robert Clark, who is a pension fund expert, and has written for the TIAA-CREF Institute, has a somewhat different take. An economics professor at the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, Clark believes in choice when it comes to retirement benefits. “There’s no question you can design a bad DC plan,” he notes. He argues that well-structured defined contribution plans are needed to mitigate the effects of “mobility risk” for an increasingly transient workforce. Perhaps even more interesting, Clark says he chose for himself ?the North Carolina Optional Retirement Plan (ORP) defined contribution plan over participation in the North Carolina Retirement Systems because he liked the plan’s portability.

克拉克认为他的北卡罗来纳州ORP成为最佳实践型号，指出了使其有吸引力的其他因素：一个监督投资福利提供者（包括TIAA-CREF，Fidelity Investments和Lincoln Financial Group）的委员会，这是一个年金选项，低费用和低于雇主员工缴费率的13％。

From the discourse among McGee, Yakoboski and others, the push will remain to develop viable and sustainable alternatives to both the classic pension and retirement savings vehicles.

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