Early in his career at EBRI, two things were evident to VanDerhei. The first was that the constraints being put upon sponsors of defined benefit plans would ultimately force institutional retirement planning to the place it is today: traditional pensions would go the way of the Dodo bird, replaced almost universally by defined contribution plans.

The second reality was the lack of unbiased modeling capabilities to account for that shift.

"Literally, there was no research being done on 401(k)s at the time," said VanDerhei.

That was the early 1990s. In 1994, VanDerhei and EBRI were able to convince members New York Life and IBM to share access on participant savings and accrual rates.

Two years later, EBRI teamed with the Investment Company Institute, the trade association representing mutual fund companies.

That unlocked a trove of data that VanDerhei ultimately used to build his brainchild, the Retirement Security Projection Model.

The proprietary tool was first deployed at the state level as early as 2002, as governors across the country were "getting paranoid" about what the future would hold for state budgets if taxpayers weren't adequately saving for retirement, explained VanDerhei.

Several modifications to the model have been made since, including one in 2010 that assesses how eligibility to defined contribution plans affects retirement readiness. A modeling feature was added in 2013 that projects the likelihood of households to run out of money in retirement.

EBRI's website says the RSPM calculator also estimates the values of defined contribution and defined benefit plans at retirement for workers still years away from leaving the workforce.

These days, when EBRI and VanDerhei release data on retirement readiness, they are drawing on account information from 26 million participants in more than 70,000 employer-sponsored plans.

"It's the largest data base with participant level information," explained VanDerhei. "The problem with limiting a study of plan analytics to Form 5500s is they don't break out individual information."

How accurate is the modeling, and can an organization that relies on support from retirement providers provide truly agnostic analysis?

In defending EBRI's modeling, VanDerhei describes a painstaking process that considers contingencies related to investment returns on both DC and DB assets, as well as methodology to account for the earning potential of different types of savers (those with only a high school education tend to have a more level earnings trajectory over their career), among a host of other factors.

RSPM modeling also accounts for longevity, postretirement investment risk, and nursing home costs, factors unique to the system VanDerhei is continually modifying.

All of that is tied in with reams of administrative data that can tell VanDerhei how those with access to a workplace plan are saving, "right down to the penny," he said.

As far as EBRI's independence is concerned, VanDerhei says proof can be found every time he publishes.

"A vast amount of the data we publish is not viewed as 'favorable' by fund companies and retirement providers," said VanDerhei. "Often it's the advocacy groups most critical of defined contribution plans that use our data to try to prove their point."

"Our credibility is vital to our mission," added VanDerhei. "We violate that and policy makers can't rely on us. Providing the most powerful simulation models is the best way to keep all the policy makers and stakeholders informed to the best degree they can be."

He says the question of eligibility to workplace savings plans is as primary to his research as it is to the overall questions facing the country's retirement prospects.

Last week's data, which in part showed pensions do a better job of replacing income for lower wage earners at a 60-percent income replacement rate, should provide a clearer picture for policy makers, said VanDerhei.

In the study, 401(k) plans do much better when measured against income replacement rates of 70 and 80 percent, especially as younger savers earn more money, and most importantly, have access to savings plans and utilize them.

"We work hard to create modeling that distinguishes the question of what happens when a worker is eligible from what happens after a worker is participating," said VanDerhei.

Nearly half of the private sector is without access to a workplace retirement plan, according to the most recent data from the Government Accountability Office.

It is one thing to assess 401(k) plans' ability to prepare workers that contribute to them, but an entirely different matter when considering self-directed plans' utility for the millions of Americans without access to a workplace plan, says VanDerhei

A central takeaway from his most recent work is that 401(k)s have the potential to be a powerful saving tool for younger workers, so long as they have access to workplace plans.

"That very question of expanding access—that's what's most impacting the policy debate, and will continue to do so going forward," he said.