Maybe some good news for pensions

Over at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (see here), they may have some good news for pensions.   According to the post, "The stock market’s rebound from its depths in the recession has lifted pension assets substantially over the past two and half years, Federal Reserve data show."

Some of this improvement is due to structural changes in the pension policies.  The National Conference of State Legislatures (see here) reports as follows: 

"From 2009 through 2011, 43 states enacted major changes in state retirement plans for broad categories of public employees and teachers to address long-term funding issues. Their changes were designed to reduce pension fund obligations by increasing employee contributions or age and service requirements for retirement, or both, and adjusting benefit provisions in various other ways that reduce costs. Such legislation was rare before 2005, but became national in scope from 2009 on. Ten states made such changes in 2009; 21 did so in 2010 and 32 did so in 2011. Several states acted more than once, for a total of 43 states over the three years. "