Busted: 45-year-old mortality data hid some pensions’ debt – WP Original
By: Mark Glennon* If you were obligated to pay pensioners for their entire lives, would you estimate how much you would need using life expectancies from the 1960s for people born between 1914 and 1918? Jean Lotus, a reporter at the Forest Park Review, just published a splendid article about a few Illinois municipalities recently doing just that. Outdated mortality tables are one way for governments to hide their pension problems from voters. For more than a decade up to a couple years ago, according to the article, the actuary for Forest Park and some other cities,