Worse than it looks : True burden and risks of federal employee pension plans

However, the numbers employee pensions to their participants, and the in the federal balance sheet, and the difference cost to taxpayers. [...] The net impact of the change is small compared with total pension assets and liabilities – the new presentation reduced the reported net pension liability by about $0.8 billion – and the inclusion of these pensions does not materially affect our calculations of the plans’ fair value. [...] But for the unfunded obligations, they show only the effect of a change in one component of the composite discount rate – future bond yields – not the full effect of a change in the discount rate. [...] In Robson and Laurin (2014), we referred back to the 2011/12 Public Accounts for an estimate of the sensitivity of the unfunded obligations to a change in the discount rate that year. [...] We used the ratio of that figure to the sensitivity of the funded obligations in 2012/13 to come up with a sensitivity for the unfunded obligations in 2012/13.