ERISA's failure to adequately protect defined-contribution-plan participants

The last two decades have seen a significant movement toward defined contribution plans as the primary We of employer-sponsored pension plan. Although such plans are promoted as attractive to an increasingly mobile workforce, the reality is that they create the risk that millions of plan participants will retire with insufficient assets to see them through their retirement years. This paper examines the concerns raised by the provision of benefits through participant-directed defined contribution plans and the failure of the law to address those concerns. It offers as a solution to such concerns the elimination of participant direction of the investment of de fined-contribution-plan assets.