Retirement at risk. (Special Section: Retirement Insecurity).(Brief Article)

AMERICANS ARE FACING A retirement crisis, and it comes in three parts. First, there is the Enron-style vulnerability of 401(k) plans. Unlike traditional retirement plans, the worker puts up most of the money and the worker takes most of the risk. When the holdings are concentrated in company stock, as in the Enron case, workers can lose everything.

But this is only the most extreme case. A much broader problem is the erosion of secure pension coverage generally. A generation ago, more than half of America's breadwinners had real ("defined benefit") pension coverage, ...

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