What everyone else already does.
The most durable argument for alternatives in DC plans is an argument about equity of access. Defined benefit pensions, endowments, and sovereign funds allocate substantially to private markets. DC participants have the same long horizon and almost none of the access. The gap is not small.
Allocation to alternatives, by investor type
Three forces behind the DC access gap.
The gap is not a preference. It is a structural artifact of how DC plans were built. Daily valuation, daily liquidity, and the fee-sensitive plaintiffs' bar all pushed menus toward the lowest-cost, most liquid, most benchmarkable products. Three underlying forces make that framing look increasingly out of step with where investment opportunities actually live.
The shrinking public market
The number of U.S. public companies has roughly halved since the late 1990s. Companies IPO later and larger. A public-only portfolio now samples a narrower slice of the economy than it did a generation ago.
Longer horizons than the vehicle assumes
The average 401(k) participant will hold plan assets for 30 to 50 years. That is a longer horizon than most endowments plan to. Daily liquidity was designed for participants who might change their allocation or their job. It was not designed to force underlying investments to be daily-liquid.
Diversification of return sources
Private credit yield, real asset income, and operational value creation in private companies respond to different drivers than public equity beta. A portfolio built entirely from public beta is exposed to a narrower set of return sources.
The honest caveat. Endowment-style results are not automatic. Institutions that succeeded had access, selection skill, and governance. A DC implementation must replicate those conditions at scale, net of fees, inside a daily-valued wrapper. That is an engineering problem as much as an investment one. Nothing on this page recommends any specific product or allocation.1