The brief’s key findings are:
Media stories suggest – especially since the bankruptcy of Detroit – that pensions are the major expense of American cities and could lead to widespread collapse.A comprehensive measure of the cost burden considers how much city taxpayers pay for the pensions of city and county general government workers and teachers.For a sample of 173 cities, these overall pension costs equal 7.9 percent of the total revenue base.The cost burden ranges from 12.3 percent for the highest cost quintile to 2.7 percent for the lowest cost quintile.