Does Public Pension Board Composition Impact Returns?

The brief’s key findings are:

• Oversight of state and local pension funds is vitally important to government officials, plan participants, and taxpayers.
• The effectiveness of pension boards depends on their structure, composition, size, and member tenure.
• Based on best practices for each factor, this analysis constructs a “Board Effectiveness Index” for 145 pension funds.
• The results show that a higher Index score could be associated with a higher 10-year investment return on fund assets.