California Research Bureau Public Retirement System Survey
Grant Boyken (CRB-07-014, December, 2007)
In response to ongoing concerns about the cost of providing post-employment benefits to public employees, the California Public Employee Post-Employment Benefits Commission requested that the California Research Bureau conduct a survey of the state's public retirement systems to identify the amount of pension benefits that remain unfunded. The survey found that despite $63.5 billion in unfunded public employee pension liabilities, public retirement systems are recovering from the impact of the downturn in the financial markets that occurred in the early 2000s. California public retirement systems' aggregate funded ratio (the total assets that the systems hold in trust funds to pay benefits relative to the expected cost of benefits they are obligated to pay) is higher than it was in the early- to mid-1990s.
PDF version (749KB) is available online.
For this and other online California Research Bureau reports, please visit the California Research Bureau page on the California State Library website.