About This Project
Pension contributions have become one of the fastest growing expenses in American public education. As pension systems have grown increasingly underfunded, states and school districts must contribute more each year to keep pace with their obligations to retirees, which represents money that would otherwise go toward teachers, classrooms, and students. This dashboard is the first nationwide, district-level database of public K-12 pension contributions in the United States, covering roughly 12,800 school districts from 2015 to 2023. It was built to help policymakers, journalists, researchers, and the general public understand how much of school budgets goes toward pension contributions and how that has changed over time.
Key Terms
Employer Pension Contributions
These are the payments that school districts and state governments make into pension systems on behalf of their employees. This is distinct from what employees themselves contribute out of their paychecks since our data captures only the employer side, which is the portion that directly affects education budgets.
Associated Education Expenditures
This is the budget denominator we use throughout this site. It refers to the portion of a district's spending that covers instruction, administration, operations, and other categories directly linked to pension-covered employees. We use this denominator rather than total expenditures because it isolates the part of the budget most directly affected by pension costs. When we say pension contributions consume 10.57% of associated education expenditures, we mean roughly one in ten dollars spent on covered employees goes to pension contributions rather than direct services.
State vs. District Contributions
In most states, pension costs are shared between the state government and local school districts. Some states pay the majority on behalf of districts, while others shift most of the burden to the district level. Our data captures both components and reports them separately as well as combined, so you can see not just the total cost, but who is actually paying it.
Where the Data Comes From
Employer contributions are reconstructed from GASB 67/68 actuarial and schedule of employer allocation reports, district CAFRs, and NCES F-33 Fiscal Survey microdata, harmonized across 95 distinct state and local defined-benefit retirement systems and approximately 12,800 districts from 2015 to 2023. Full methodology, imputation choices, and state-specific notes are documented on the Methodology page.
How to Use This Site
This site contains five tools, each designed for a different level of analysis.
District Lookup is the core tool. It lets you search any of the ~12,800 school districts in our database and see their pension contribution history from 2015 to 2023. These data include total dollars, budget share, and how costs split between state and district payments. If you're a journalist covering a specific community, a school board member, or a parent trying to understand your district's budget pressures, start here.
State Comparisons lets you select any two states and view their pension contribution metrics side by side. For each state, you can see the actual 2023 contribution rate as a share of associated education expenditures, how costs shift under different discount rate scenarios (including the MVL benchmark), total dollar contributions, and plan funding ratios. A side-by-side chart and detailed comparison table make it easy to see exactly how the two states differ and by how much.
Sensitivity Analysis addresses a fundamental uncertainty in pension finance: reported costs depend heavily on what investment return a pension plan assumes. Plans that assume higher returns appear better funded and require lower contributions today but may face larger shortfalls later if those returns don't materialize. This tool lets you see how pension burdens across every state would change if actual returns fall below current assumptions. It is designed for analysts and researchers who want to stress-test the official numbers.
Budget Calculator makes the numbers concrete for a specific district. Rather than percentages, it translates pension costs into dollars — and then into equivalents like teachers, textbooks, or classroom aides. If you want to understand what pension contributions actually displace in a given district's budget, this is the right tool.
State Reports are pre-built, downloadable summaries for each state covering funding ratios, contribution trends, and pension system details. They are designed to be shared directly with a legislator, a school board, a reporter, or a community group without requiring any prior familiarity with the underlying data.
Understanding the National Picture
The national 10.57% figure masks dramatic variation across states. Pension burdens range from 3.2% to 22.8% of district-covered employee budgets.
How States Cluster by Pension Burden (2023)
Key Patterns
- Most states cluster in the middle: About 60% of states fall between 6–12% burden
- But outliers face severe pressure: 8 states exceed 13%, with Illinois above 20%
- Low-burden states exist: 12 states keep pension costs under 6% of budgets
- Growth is widespread: 37 out of 51 states (73%) saw their burden increase since 2015
Explore Your State
Select your state below to see a guided walkthrough of what the pension data shows and what it means for districts in your area.
Understanding Your State's Pension Data
Your State on the Map
Highlighted: Your state. View district-level details →
What Does This Mean?
Select a state to see the interpretation.
Looking WithinYour State
The pension burden varies across districts within the state. Here's what you can explore:
- Total pension contributions paid by each district
- Pension costs as % of covered employee budget to see which districts face the most pension cost-induced budgetary pressure
- State vs. district share showing who pays what
- Year-over-year trends from 2015 to 2023
Next step: Use the District Lookup tool to search for specific districts and see detailed breakdowns.
What Could Change? (Sensitivity Analysis)
Pension costs aren't fixed—they depend heavily on investment returns.
Next step: Use the Sensitivity Analysis tool to model different scenarios and see how pension costs could change under various economic conditions.