Private Pensions: Changes Can Produce a Modest Increase in Use of Simplified Employee Pensions.
Abstract
Computing average firm sizes and applying this to the number of firms that would respond to incentives allows us to estimate the potential number of workers that could have a pension plan made available in their firm. This number could be considered as an upper-bound estimate of the number of workers that could become covered by a SEP or by some other type of plan, assuming an "ideal" package of provisions that would encourage the maximum potential sponsorship. In all, 13.2 percent of firms with fewer than 25 employees said they would respond to policy changes or lower administrative costs, as the table shows. This translates to about 600,000 firms and an estimated 2.35 million workers. If all these firms sponsored a plan, plan availability rates in the SBA data would increase from their current 17.8 percent to about 26.5 percent for firms with fewer than 25 employees. Applying our calculations across all firm size categories, we estimate that a total of 4 million workers potentially could have a plan made available to them as a result of policy changes or lower administrative costs. This would increase the overall plan availability rate from 64.1 to 68.1 percent and if all of the workers were also "covered," the overall pension plan coverage rate from the current 41.8 to 45.9 percent. (KAR) p. 21
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jul 01, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA298882
Entities
Organizations
- United States Government Accountability Office