Brookings31%
Strategies to restore lifetime income to retirement plans 11%
By Gopi Shah Goda0% Joshua Gotbaum0% Aidan Creeron0% Lily Nevo0%
7/9/2026, 1:00:22 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 7 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Optimism Bias, and Appeal to Emotion, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 16.6% saturation with 55 hits. Analysis detected 212 faulty-reasoning hits from 331 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 27.5% and a BS Rank of 11% (14,351 of 15,980 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 89.80% of the article peer group.
As employers moved away from traditional defined benefit pension plans to defined contribution plans (e.g., 401(k)s), the share of guaranteed lifetime income in retirement has declined.
Despite multiple policy changes over several decades to encourage the adoption and use of lifetime income options in defined contribution plans, few employers offer annuities and few retirees choose them when offered.
Increasing adoption of lifetime income requires fully addressing barriers to both employers offering lifetime income options and employees choosing them.
Employers will only offer lifetime income options if their fiduciary obligations for including them are no greater than those for including other options.
Employees will need greater availability of automatic defaults that preserve choice and flexibility.
They will also continue to need to be adequately protected from high-priced products and risky providers.
Federal policies have for decades attempted to encourage the inclusion of lifetime income options in defined contribution plans.
The Pension Protection Act of 2006, the SECURE Act of 2019, and SECURE 2.0 of 2022 all represent bipartisan legislative efforts that included provisions designed to facilitate annuity offerings in workplace retirement plans.
However, their impact has been limited: fewer than 10% of plans offer in-plan annuities, and uptake among participants who have access remains minimal.
For policies to significantly increase the adoption of lifetime income, they must effectively address the institutional factors preventing employers from offering annuity options and the many frictions in decision-making that result in people not choosing them even when they are offered.
This could be achieved by:
elimination of employer liability for including annuities in retirement plans, combined with alternative effective measures to control costs and provide protection for retirees; and
inclusion of annuities in default investment options, combined with ways to preserve retiree flexibility.
Higher rates of annuitization could meaningfully impact the well-being of older adults by providing additional security against the risk of outliving one’s assets and reducing rates of poverty among widows.
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Analysis
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