The National Institute on Retirement Security recently published research claiming a “retirement efficiency gap” between traditional defined benefit public pension plans and alternative defined contribution retirement plans. The National Institute on Retirement Security analysis compares the costs of typical defined benefit plans and defined contribution plans, finding that defined benefit pensions can provide the same retirement benefits for lower total contributions. While the report makes some valuable observations, the analysis misses key facts and wrongly suggests that defined benefit plans have superior efficiency.
A key issue with the National Institute on Retirement Security’s (NIRS) analysis is that it does not address
