>"The objective is to provide employees with "attractive" benefits while also curbing the unsustainable growth of Boeing's pension liabilities, according to human resources senior vice president Tony Parasida."
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>Like many US citizens, you've come to accept the notion that employee-related costs are "unsustainable" at the same time that CEO compensation, corporate profits and large shareholder wealth accelerate exponentially.
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>I think that defined benefit plans were sustainable when people retired at 65 and the average life expectancy was 73 in 1965. They are not anymore because today a man can expect to live, on average, until age 84.3 and a woman can expect to live, on average, until age 86.6. And those are just averages. About one out of every four people will live past age 90, and one out of 10 will live past age 95. I believe that in the case of most large corporations, the CEO salaries and share holder profits come out of the company profits. This is not the case for pensions.
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>In fact, the gradual shift from employer-funded and managed guaranteed benefit plans to employee-funded and managed guaranteed contribution plans (aka 401K) has been one of the most prodigious rip-offs in the history of US labor relations.
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>IMHO, the shift to defined contribution plans has resulted from the longer life expectancy that we now enjoy. Even social security, when it was introduced, was not meant to be collected by the majority of people, nor was it intended to be paid out to an individual for 30 years. Of course, social security faces the same problems as DB plans - it is not sustainable.

expected life span clearly is one of the key factors. The other shoe dropping is interest rates approximating zero, forcing pensions to live on accrued capital mostly. At least in calculatons over here, where pension funds are not as heavily invested in the stock markets (which also at least adds to the variance, even if returns are higher at todays pure interest rates).