The Effect of Firm Bankruptcy on Retiree Benefits, with Applications to the Automotive and Coal Industries

"Benefits for retired employees are of particular interest to policy makers because of the growing

number of retirees and forecasts indicating that some future retirees may not have the necessary financial resources to maintain their standards of living. Part of this congressional concern is what happens when bankrupt employers are unable to provide promised pension and health benefits to their retired employees.."

Bankrupcty and retiree benefits

Survey of Public Pension, State Data: 2012

"The Survey of Public Pensions: State-Administered Defined Benefit Data provides revenues, expenditures, financial assets, membership, and liabilities information for defined benefit public pension systems. Data are shown by state, for the state-administered systems. There are 227 state-administered defined benefit public pension systems, all of which are represented here..."
Public pensions

Survey of Public Pensions: State and Local data: 2012

"The Survey of Public Pensions: State- and Locally-Administered Defined Benefit Data provides revenues, expenditures, financial assets, and membership information for the defined benefit public pension systems. Data are shown for individual pension systems as well as at the national, state, and local level. There were 227 state-administered and 3,771 locally-administered defined benefit public pension systems, all of which are represented here..."
Pensions

FTC Warns Veterans: Be Wary of ‘Free’ Pension Advice

"The Federal Trade Commission warns veterans and their families:  Be wary of dishonest advisers offering “free” help with paperwork for pension claims.

Unscrupulous lawyers, financial planners and insurance agents advise veterans over 65 to transfer their assets to a trust, or to invest in insurance products, so they can qualify for Aid and Attendance benefits.  By following their advice, you could lose your eligibility for Medicaid services and the use of your money for a long time, plus get billed for fees that range from hundreds to thousands of dollars.

To learn more, read the FTC’s Poaching Veterans’ Pensions.."
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2013/02/vetspension.shtm

State Pension Systems Assets Rise Nearly $325 Billion in 2011

"The nation’s state-administered defined benefit retirement systems totaled $2.5 trillion in cash and investment holdings in 2011, a 14.6 percent increase from $2.2 trillion in 2010, according to new statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau. Earnings on investments were $410.6 billion, up from $291.1 billion in 2010. (See Table 1.)

These statistics come from the 2011 Annual Survey of Public Pensions: State-Administered Defined Benefit Data, which provides an annual look at the financial activity and membership information for the nation’s 222 state-administered public-employee retirement systems, including revenues, expenditures, investment holdings, membership and beneficiaries. Statistics are shown for the nation and individual states..."

The Underfunding of State and Local Pension Plan
From: Economic and Budget Issue Brief, May 2011.
"The recent financial crisis and economic recession have left many states and localities with extraordinary budgetary difficulties for the next few years, but structural shortfalls in their pension plans pose a problem that is likely to endure for much longer. This issue brief discusses alternative approaches to assessing the size of those shortfalls and the implications of those approaches for funding decisions:

By any measure, nearly all state and local pension plans are underfunded, which means that the value of the plans’ assets is less than their accrued pension liabilities for current workers and retirees.

There are two leading approaches for valuing assets and liabilities, and the reported amount of underfunding varies significantly depending on which one is used.

Decisions about how to address the underfunding can be informed by the choice between those two
measurement approaches, but there is no necessary connection between the information provided by the two approaches and decisions about how much a plan’s sponsor should contribute each year.."

The Worker, Retiree, and Employer Recovery Act of 2008: An Overview
"In December of 2008, Congress unanimously enacted the Worker, Retiree, and Employer
Recovery Act of 2008 (WRERA) (P.L. 110-455), which makes several technical corrections to the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (P.L. 109-280) and contains provisions designed to help pension plans and plan participants weather the current economic downturn. This report highlights the provisions of WRERA relating to the economic crisis, such as the temporary waiver of required minimum distributions and provisions that temporarily relax certain pension plan funding requirements. This report also discusses certain technical corrections to the Pension Protection Act made by WRERA, and certain other notable provisions of the Act affecting retirement plans and benefits."