State and Local Pension Reform Since the Financial Crisis

The brief’s key findings are:

• Since the financial crisis, 74 percent of state plans and 57 percent of large local plans have cut benefits or raised employee contributions to curb rising costs.
• Plans with a larger pension cost burden and lower initial employee contributions were more likely to enact such changes.
• And, among plans that made changes, those in states with the strongest legal protections for current workers were more likely to limit the cuts to new hires.