Whatever happened to pensions? For people of a certain age, they were a fundamental feature of working life in America — and a retirement benefit that millions of Americans came to expect at the close of their careers. For younger people today, the better question may be: “What is a pension?” That benefit that so many took for granted has almost vanished from the landscape.

In this week’s episode of “No Dumb Questions,” Domestic Economics Reporter Matthew Zeitlin has answers for young and old — as in, both the “What happened?” and the “What are they?” questions about company pensions. The history of the pension actually dates to the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War — although the private sector version didn’t get traction until the latter part of the 19th century. The trend away from pension programs has a lot to do with sea changes in the American workplace — in particular, the slow erosion of the traditional one-company career. As Zeitlin explains, “A pension system works best when you have the type of job where you’re going to be there for decades.” And that, of course, is a rarity these days.

But as is the case in other episodes in this series, it’s more complicated than that, and it’s also by no means a “dumb question.”

We’d love to hear from you with other ideas for the series. We like to think there are no “dumb questions”; or put differently, that there’s almost nothing out there in the world of news and information that couldn’t use a little more clarity and context in terms of the answers. We also know that we have really smart readers and that even the smartest among them can’t be expected to have every shred of important context or background on all the events that are roiling the world at any given moment. Send your ideas and questions to tips@grid.news.

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