Equity securities include Verizon common stock in the amounts of $72 million (less than 1% of total plan assets) and $121 million (less than 1% of total plan assets) at December 31, 2005 and 2004, respectively. Other assets include cash and cash equivalents (primarily held for the payment of benefits), private equity and investments in absolute return strategies.

Health Care and Life Plans
The weighted-average asset allocations for the other postretirement benefit plans by asset category follow:

Equity securities include Verizon common stock in the amounts of $4 million (less than 1% of total plan assets) and $8 million (less than 1% of total plan assets) at December 31, 2005 and 2004, respectively.

The portfolio strategy emphasizes a long-term equity orientation, significant global diversification, the use of both public and private investments and professional financial and operational risk controls. Assets are allocated according to a long-term policy neutral position and held within a relatively narrow and pre-determined range. Both active and passive management approaches are used depending on perceived market efficiencies and various other factors.

Cash Flows
Federal legislation was enacted on April 10, 2004 that provides temporary pension funding relief for the 2004 and 2005 plan years. The legislation replaced the 30-year treasury rate with a higher corporate bond rate for determining the current liability. In 2005, we contributed $744 million to our qualified pension trusts, $108 million to our nonqualified pension plans and $1,085 million to our other postretirement benefit plans. Our estimate of the amount and timing of required qualified pension trust contributions for 2006 is based on current regulations, including continued pension funding relief, and is approximately $100 million, primarily for the TELPRI plans. We anticipate $145 million in contributions to our non-qualified pension plans in 2006 and $1,180 million to our other postretirement benefit plans.

Estimated Future Benefit Payments
The benefit payments to retirees, which reflect expected future service, are expected to be paid as follows:

Savings Plan and Employee Stock Ownership Plans
We maintain four leveraged employee stock ownership plans (ESOP). Under these plans, we match a certain percentage of eligible employee contributions to the savings plans with shares of our common stock from these ESOPs. Common stock is allocated from all leveraged ESOP trusts based on the proportion of principal and interest paid on ESOP debt in a year to the remaining principal and interest due over the term of the debt. The final debt service payments and related share allocations for two of our leveraged ESOPs were made in 2004. At December 31, 2005, the number of unallocated and allocated shares of common stock was 5 million and 76 million, respectively. All leveraged ESOP shares are included in earnings per share computations.

We recognize leveraged ESOP cost based on the modified shares allocated method for the leveraged ESOP trusts which purchased securities before December 15, 1989 and the shares allocated method for the leveraged ESOP trust which purchased securities after December 15, 1989. ESOP cost and trust activity consist of the following:

In addition to the ESOPs described above, we maintain savings plans for non-management employees and employees of certain subsidiaries. Compensation expense associated with these savings plans was $254 million in 2005, $234 million in 2004 and $220 million in 2003.

Severance Benefits
The following table provides an analysis of our severance liability recorded in accordance with SFAS Nos. 112 and 146: