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Defined Benefit Pensions: Survey of Sponsors of Large Defined Benefit Pension Plans (GAO-08-818SP, July 2008), an E-supplement to GAO-08-817

GAO-08-818SP Published: Jul 21, 2008. Publicly Released: Jul 21, 2008.
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Highlights

Over the last five years, a number of large, high profile employers have announced their intention to freeze-- an amendment to the plan to limit some or all future pension accruals for some or all plan participants-- their larger defined benefit (DB) plans that represent a significant portion of plan liabilities and plan participants in the private DB system. To better understand the current plan freeze environment and its significance to the DB system going forward, GAO conducted a study of sponsors of tax-qualified, single-employer, defined benefit (DB) plans that had 100 or more total participants. Specifically, we surveyed a stratified probability sample of plan sponsors about their experiences with DB plans and plan freezes. We obtained a weighted response rate of 78 percent. A more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology is contained in our report: Defined Benefit Pensions: Plan Freezes Affect Millions of Participants and May Pose Retirement Income Challenges, GAO-08-817 (Washington, D.C.: July 21, 2008). We administered the survey from November, 2007 through May 2008 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Supplemental Material

Background

Over the last five years, a number of large, high profile employers have announced their intention to freeze-- an amendment to the plan to limit some or all future pension accruals for some or all plan participants-- their larger defined benefit (DB) plans that represent a significant portion of plan liabilities and plan participants in the private DB system. To better understand the current plan freeze environment and its significance to the DB system going forward, GAO conducted a study of sponsors of tax-qualified, single-employer, defined benefit (DB) plans that had 100 or more total participants. Specifically, we surveyed a stratified probability sample of plan sponsors about their experiences with DB plans and plan freezes. We obtained a weighted response rate of 78 percent. A more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology is contained in our report: Defined Benefit Pensions: Plan Freezes Affect Millions of Participants and May Pose Retirement Income Challenges, GAO-08-817 (Washington, D.C.: July 21, 2008). We administered the survey from November, 2007 through May 2008 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.


Instructions for Viewing this Survey

Special Viewing Instructions

These tables are a product of combining the results of two questionnaires-- the first 17 questions and last question from a web questionnaire to large plan sponsors (with 50,000 or more participants) and a shorter mail questionnaire with the same 18 questions to smaller plan sponsors (100 to less than 50,000 participants). This document presents the results using the web survey format, including the navigation and introduction material from the web survey.

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