The U.S. Census Bureau reports that California's state and local government retirement system's paid $28.95 billion to retirees and their survivors in fiscal 2007 in defined benefits.
About $19.33 billion of that went to state retirees and their survivors. The rest, roughly $9.62 billion, went to local government retirees and their survivors. The totals include benefits, withdrawals and other payments.
The nation's state and local government retirement systems paid $168 billion in fiscal 2007 to 7.5 million retirees and their survivors. That represented a $12 billion increase from the previous year when 7.3 million received payments.
There were 2,547 retirement systems in 2007 with a total membership of 18.6 million people who could be eligible for regular benefit payments in the future.
You can read the USCB press release by clicking here.
Or skip the government blather and go into the data. You can download spreadsheets that include state and local public pension revenues, expenditures, investment statistics and membership numbers by clicking here.
What even more? Go here to review the statistics all the way back to 1993.
Special note: Thanks to Bee researcher Pete Basofin for flagging this data for us.
The Author
About Comments
Reader comments on Sacbee.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Sacramento Bee. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "report abuse" button below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.