[Excerpt] The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) was established by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to ensure that participants in defined benefit pension plans receive their pensions if their plans terminate without sufficient assets to pay promised benefits. PBGC administers separate insurance programs to protect participants in single-employer and multiemployer plans.
PBGC has published the Pension Insurance Data Book annually since 1996 to present detailed statistics on PBGC program operations and benefit protection. This edition of the Pension Insurance Data Book has been expanded and the order of the tables has been slightly revised. Tables related to the growing number of plans using hybrid benefit formulas have been added to provide more data on this significant trend in retirement benefits. A “table listing key” at the end of this book will assist those familiar with the table numbers in the 2003 edition of the Pension Insurance Data Book in finding the relevant table(s) in this edition.
The Data Book tables are available in electronic form on PBGC’s Web site at www.pbgc.gov/publications/databook
