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Research — Policy Center

Reckoning with Historic Unfunded Municipal Pension Obligations

This report examines the historical decisions that contributed to these unfunded liabilities and highlights how current taxpayers are paying more than their fair share.

March 25, 2025

Key Takeaways

As of 2023, recent generations of Massachusetts taxpayers paid an estimated $22 billion more than their fair share to cover local pension obligations left by prior generations, yet these local plans still have an estimated $8 billion in unfunded liabilities.
Current taxpayers face additional costs because most of the pension funds are managed by local boards that have underperformed the state pension fund by more than $5.4 billion since the 1980s.
Geographic disparities associated with uneven changes in population since the late 1970s have exacerbated this burden for residents of some communities, including many Gateway Cities.
This pattern means lower-income residents and people of color shoulder an inequitable share of legacy pension costs. Since the 1980s, Gateway City residents have paid billions more than their own generation’s fair share to cover local pension costs, with more than $5 billion in appropriations made for legacy pension costs since 2010.