Changing Tracks? The Prospect for California Pension Reform

Though they cover one-tenth of all adult Californians, the state’s two largest pension funds face a bleak future, with a combined deficit in the hundreds of billions of dollars. In this paper, we examine the politics and policies behind the state’s pension train wreck, identifying two primary causes of the crisis. First, re-election minded officials have systematically underfunded the state’s public pensions in an effort to balance the budget. Second, to make up for this underfunding, pension administrators have taken on increasing risk, investing a majority of the systems’ assets on corporate stocks. This voter-sanctioned policy shift has exposed the pension funds, and their government sponsors, to increasing stock market volatility, resulting in growing pension payments at precisely the moment that state and local governments can least afford to make them.