How have the number of private pension plans grown by type from 1975-2022?

04/25/2025

Private-sector retirement plans must submit annual reports on the plans’ operations, funding and investments. The chart below shows weighted plan count data since 1975 from Form 5500 series reports for both defined benefit and defined contribution retirement plans.

Insights:

In 1975, the first year after ERISA was passed, one-third of all private pension plans filing the Form 5500 were defined benefit plans. By 1990, this share fell to less than 16%, and it dropped to about 7% by 2000. The defined benefit plan share has remained relatively stable since – the number of large defined benefit plans continued to decrease while the number of small defined benefit plans increased from 2012 to 2022.

Causes of the shift from defined benefit to defined contribution plans include:

• The introduction of 401(k) type defined contribution plans in 1978;
• Additional employer control over the magnitude and timing of contributions in defined contribution plans;
• The ease in portability of defined contribution plans (see https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-19-342t.pdf);
• Employers’ costs are typically higher in defined benefit plans, making defined contribution plans more financially attractive to them;
• Contributions to defined contribution plans are usually more predictable; and
• Since defined benefit plans provide benefits consistently in retirement, future liabilities are contingent and the funding of the liabilities highly dependent on complicated actuarial assumptions. As a result, defined contribution plans are typically simpler to administer  (see https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12007). 

Find more information on Employee Benefits Security Administration data.