Defined contribution plans in the USA typically have an extremely small contribution by the employer. Works out great for the employer. Doesn’t work out so great for lower wage earners as they struggle to fund the plan.
Maybe they can work well with proper oversight, but the status quo for the majority of defined benefit plans is to be mismanaged and underfunded. See the role (union negotiated) defined benefit plans had in the US auto industry collapse. 60 out of the 100 largest corporate defined benefit plans in the US are underfunded, more than half! Chart in that article shows that 40% being funded is actually unusually high, historical trend is 15-20% of plans meeting funding levels. https://www.wsj.com/articles/companies-u-s-pension-plans-are...
Funding a defined benefit plan for lower wage workers vs paying lower wage workers more and contributing more to a defined contribution plan has exactly the same costs on the employer side. The only way the defined benefit plan appears to work out better for both parties is because we have legalized the employer not funding these plans to the appropriate level and hanging the supposed beneficiaries of the plan out to dry when it goes south.
Even ignoring the rampant underfunding issues defined benefit plans are a classic example of the principle agent problem where the interests/risk appetite of the fund manager and the fund members don't line up perfectly.
Note that all three of those are subject to democratic capture, in which low-information voters enable the pension managers to make poor risk and actuarial decisions. Of course, a defined-contribution plan is also subject to low-information control, but at least the damage is confined to the one making the mistake, not to those unwillingly along for the ride.
I understand that defined-contribution plans must offer similar terms to both executives and regular employees, specifically to help ensure that they are fair to employees.
You mentioned low-income workers twice, but I don’t see any inherent advantage to defined-benefit plans or inherent disadvantage of defined-contribution plans for them. It is arguable that low-income workers are also less educated and less likely to make wise or even reasonable investment decisions when in charge of their own funds. Of course, they are also less likely to make wise decisions in the choice of their pension managers.
Another huge advantage of defined-contribution funds is that one owns them and can pass them on to one’s heirs, unlike defined-benefit plans.
There is an advantage to defined-benefit plans which also come with insurance (e.g. disability), but I suspect it would be more efficient to unbundle them.
New York has a well funded pension plan because they have centralized control (it’s governed by a separately elected state official), there’s good governance around it and the law makes it difficult for local government to short their contributions.
Illinois and New Jersey took a more yolo approach and their funds are essentially insolvent.
Does it? I think employers would be far better off if they didn't have to manage benefits. Having the employer administer everything was the deal we struck to provide socialist-like assurances for the middle classes while keeping the word "socialism" out of politics. The cost is every employer managing a complex system of benefits, workers navigating a bunch of different benefits systems as they change employers, more benefits systems to paper over gaps, and separate systems for a few categories of non-employed people that it would seem too brutal to leave unsupported. It's fantastically complicated, and there's no point to doing it that way except that we can call it capitalism.