Pew Study Finds States Face $2.73 Trillion Bill for Retiree Benefits
Excerpt from The Pew Charitable Trusts report press release on funding government retiree benefits. Read the whole press release here. It’s a good summary.
Pensions
Nationally, state pension plans are in reasonably good shape. At the end of fiscal year (FY) 2006, states had set aside over $1.99 trillion of the $2.35 trillion they had made in pension promises—leaving about $361 billion unfunded.
But the good news nationally masks important variations across the states:
- Over the past decade, only a third of the states have consistently set aside the amount their own actuaries said was necessary to cover the cost of promised benefits over the long term.
- Twenty states had funding levels of less than 80 percent at the end of FY 2006—below what most experts consider healthy.
- Several states have seen particularly troubling drops in their pension funding levels. Some of the biggest drops have occurred in Hawaii, Kentucky, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Washington.
View the whole 73-page report here. View the Hawaii fact sheet here. Read the Honolulu Advertiser article that finds the report says “Hawaii’s $6.8 billion long-term bill for government retiree healthcare is the second-worst among states when viewed on a per-capita basis.”