Interactive Map

See state-specific data on pension and retiree health care funding.

The Widening Gap: The Great Recession’s Impact on State Pension and Retiree Health Care Costs analyzes 2009 data on states' funding of pensions and retiree health care. The report shows how states’ retirement systems—many of them already on shaky ground—were affected by the Great Recession:

The Widening Gap is a follow-up study to Pew's 2010 report, The Trillion Dollar Gap. It covers pension, health care and other benefits promised to current and future retirees.

• Pension funding shortfalls accounted for $660 billion of the $1.26 trillion gap, and unfunded retiree health care costs accounted for the remaining $607 billion.
  
  
• States had only about $31 billion, or 5 percent, saved toward their obligations for retiree health care benefits.
  
  
• State pension plans were 78 percent funded, declining from 84 percent in 2008.

Report Assets

• Full Report
• Interactive Map
• Press Release
• Pensions News

Expert

Pew Expert: Kil Huh

Kil Huh is director of the States’ Fiscal Health Project. 

Video

State Pension Costs

Watch Sue Urahn, managing director for the Pew Center on the States, discuss the scope of the pension and retiree health benefit problem.