The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will soon ask for public comment about a plan to promote converting 401(k) and IRA savings into annuities or other "steady payment streams," Bloomberg reports. Phyllis C. Borzi, assistant Labor secretary, told the paper the inquiry would also cover other ways to guarantee retirement income, such as longevity insurance.

"There's been a fair amount of discussion in the literature taking the view that perhaps there ought to be more lifetime income. The question is how to encourage it, and whether the government can and should be helpful in that regard," Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry told the paper.

Such a proposal could meet with public opposition, according to a recent report by the Investment Company Institute. When asked whether retirees should be able to make their own decisions about retirement assets and income, 96 percent of households surveyed by ICI agreed that they should. When asked direct questions about the government's involvement in retirement income, respondents were only slightly less opposed. Seventy-two percent said the government shouldn't "require retirees to trade a portion of their retirement plan accounts for a fair contract that promises to pay them income for life from an insurance company." When asked if that contract should be with the government rather than an insurance company, disagreement fell only one percentage point to 71 percent.