A number of factors - including a sobered stock market, deficit pressures, and corporate cutbacks - may be putting the retirement security of baby boomers at greater threat than at any time in a quarter century.

This week's provocative call by Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan to scale back future Social Security benefits to help cover a growing federal budget deficit, is just part of the concern.

Evidence is mounting that the other two pillars of retirement security - private-sector pensions and personal savings - are no longer adequate to ensure that most Americans will have enough to live on when then retire.

From United Airlines to General Motors Corp., large companies are struggling to meet their obligations to retirees. The federal plan that guarantees these pensions is $11.2 billion in the red.

And even as the stock market recovers, experts say that 401(k)s and other personal savings aren't nearly big enough.

"Tens of millions of Americans are seriously underprepared to meet their financial needs in retirement," says Benjamin Stein, of the National Retirement Planning Coalition. As many as 40 percent of Americans have saved almost nothing for retirement, he told a congressional panel Wednesday.

At the problem's root is a long-term shift that politicians are reluctant to face: With Americans living longer, the senior population is growing faster than the number of young workers to cover their needs. Benefit levels are getting harder to sustain.

It's a calculus that is as challenging for corporate pension plans as it is for Medicare and Social Security programs.

The defined retirement benefit, the pension that was once a standard perk in a big firm, is a rapidly disappearing option for many Americans. The number of Fortune 100 companies offering a fixed-benefit pension has dropped from 68 percent in 1998 to 50 percent in 2002, according to Watson Wyatt Worldwide. And federal data show a steady fall in private-sector workers who have pensions: from 38 percent in 1980 to 21 percent in 1998.

That decline, in part, reflects the trials of old-line manufacturing industries, airlines, and automakers. Some experts say it also, ironically, stems from a 1978 law intended to keep pensions from going belly up, but which added costs and regulation.

But if the decline of pensions is important, this week's talk of changes to Social Security is generating the biggest buzz. Greenspan's comments set off a flurry of election-year positioning.

Both the White House and leading Democratic candidates quickly distanced themselves from Mr. Greenspan's proposal. Democrats attacked President Bush for wanting to make his tax cuts permanent at a time of growing concern about senior entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare.

"It is defaulting on our promise to our future retirees to cut their benefits to make up for the higher deficits caused by massive tax cuts for the wealthy," says Reps. Charles Rangel (D) of New York, the ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.

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