Funded Ratio (FR):
Assets / Accrued Liabilities
is a faulty indicator of which state has the biggest pension problem since the liability numbers are surely fudged* so as to develop contributions as low as possible. But, since we did the grunt work of pulling off the data from state actuarial reports, it is easy enough to sort and subtotal all the data by state which show that, with an FR of 45.78% and total unfunded liabilities of over $135 billion (also the most), the worst funded state pension system is….
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.
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* And by fudged I do not mean within any 5% IRS corridor for being acceptable. The $1 trillion official unfunded liability has gotten as high as $8 trillion to some minds. The New Jersey plans put their Accrued Liability (AL) as of July 1, 2015 at $146 billion for 773,133 participants including 313,438 retirees. That comes to less than $190,000 per participant as a present value. With retirees getting $9.6 billion annually, many on J&S normal forms and at earlier retirement ages than the private sector, that $146 billion AL number would be closer to the mark if it applied only to the retirees.
Burypensions Blog 
Posted by Art Tepfer on August 10, 2016 at 1:56 pm
And of course it is. In my humble opinion, Illinois will do anything possible to retain the Number 1 ranking,
Posted by Anonymous on August 10, 2016 at 2:00 pm
Hopefully NJ dorsn’t beg to differ?
Posted by Theodore Konshak on August 10, 2016 at 4:10 pm
Since when has Art Tepfer has ever been humble? The youngsters don’t remember great accounting firms like Laventhol & Horwath and Arthur Andersen. .
Posted by Chris Tobe on August 12, 2016 at 2:27 pm
Kentucky’s one state plan KERS was 17% funded as of June 2015