The failing pension net

Charleston Gazette:

What’s more, corporations have dropped about 80,000 of the private pension plans on record in the country in 1985, according to studies. Corporations find the shift to the 401(k) less costly.

It surprised me that pension-earning Americans have fallen from more than 35 percent in 1980 to under 20 percent today.

And get this, analysts say, the average 30-year-old worker will collect less than $400 a month (in 2003 dollars) upon turning 67. By comparison, the average 70-year-old pensioner today collects more than twice that amount.

Jane Bryant Quinn writes in the current issue of Newsweek, “If Social Security switches to private accounts, the gap will widen between those who make it and those who don’t.”