[Excerpt] The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) was established by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to ensure that participants in defined benefit plans receive their pensions even if their plans terminate without sufficient assets to pay promised benefits. Separate insurance programs protect participants in single-employer and multiemployer plans. PBGC has published the Pension Insurance Data Book annually since 1996 to present detailed statistics on PBGC program operations and benefit protection. In addition to tabular presentations of current and historical data on PBGC’s single-employer and multiemployer pension insurance programs, this edition features an analysis of the PBGC guarantee limits and the benefits received by participants in single-employer plans trusteed by PBGC.