Median pension plan costs for the roughly 70% of S&P 500 companies...

Median pension plan costs for the roughly 70% of S&P 500 companies that offer traditional defined benefit pension plans held steady in 2004 despite two years in a row of double-digit investment gains, according to Mercer Human Resource Consulting's latest annual study of S&P 500 retirement plans. Investment gains of 12.2% for 2004 and 18.1% for 2003 helped lift the median funded status of S&P 500 plans over the two-year period to 83% of projected liabilities from 75% in 2002, confirmed spokeswoman Stephanie Poe. Offsetting those gains, the fall in the discount rate that plans used to calculate the current value of future liabilities, along with the continued amortization of the losses plans suffered during the 2000-2002 bear market, left the median pension plan burden steady at 0.5% of revenues.