A decade of consistent economic growth lifted the major stock market indices to all-time highs in 2018. But even before the recent dip, many state pension plans were struggling to get back to where they were before the last recession. Unfunded pension debt across the 50 states totals a staggering $1.6 trillion, even by the plans’ own (often overly rosy) accounting.
If a decade of positive investment returns can’t fix what’s wrong with America’s public pension systems, how much worse could things get in the event of another downturn? That’s what Greg Mennis, Susan Banta, and David Draine, three researchers at the Harvard Kennedy School, set out to determine. They subjected state pension plans to a series of stress tests meant to simulate the consequences of a variety of adverse economic climates over the next two decades, including everything from another major recession to merely lower-than-expected investment growth.
What they found isn’t pretty, writes Eric Boehm.
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