What changed between FY2023 and FY2024
The source publishes a funded ratio for each plan, each year. It does not say what moved. Every change on this page is split into the part the plan’s assets account for and the part its accrued liability accounts for, because a ratio can jump without a dollar being contributed.
The verdict
110 of 178 plans improved their funded ratio FY2023 to FY2024 and 57 declined, an average move of +0.7 points.
- 110
- Plans improved
- 57
- Plans declined
- +0.7
- Average move (points)
- 0
- Liability re-measured
Denominator: the 178 of 197 plans with source-reconciled actuarial ratio, assets and accrued liability in BOTH FY2023 and FY2024; dataset loaded July 2026. Unreconciled rows are excluded. Not a benefit or tax forecast.
How much plans moved, FY2023 to FY2024
Every plan reporting both years, grouped by the size of its funded-ratio change in percentage points. Most plans move very little in a single year, which is what makes the outliers worth naming.
Largest improvements that assets paid for
Plans whose funded ratio rose most FY2023 to FY2024, excluding any plan whose reported accrued liability moved further than a year of accruals can explain. The two right-hand columns split the move: what the ratio would have done on the prior year’s liability, and everything the liability side accounts for. They sum to the total.
| Plan | FY2023 | FY2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Detroit Police and Fire Retirement System · MI | 74.7% | 127.3% | +52.5 |
| Atlanta Police Fund · GA | 75.5% | 80.2% | +4.8 |
| Kentucky Retirement Systems · KY | 39.7% | 44.1% | +4.4 |
| Oklahoma Public Employees Retirement System · OK | 98.5% | 102.7% | +4.2 |
| Educational Employees' Supplementary Retirement System of Fairfax County · VA | 74.3% | 78.5% | +4.2 |
| New Orleans Employees' Retirement System · LA | 58.8% | 62.9% | +4.1 |
| Washington Department of Retirement Systems · WA | 95.8% | 99.8% | +4.0 |
| West Virginia Consolidated Public Retirement Board · WV | 87.5% | 91.3% | +3.9 |
| Louisiana Municipal Employees · LA | 76.7% | 80.5% | +3.7 |
| Georgia Employees Retirement System · GA | 72.8% | 76.5% | +3.7 |
| Houston Municipal · TX | 69.0% | 72.7% | +3.6 |
| Connecticut State Employees Retirement System · CT | 52.0% | 55.2% | +3.2 |
| Boston Retirement Board · MA | 72.9% | 76.1% | +3.2 |
| Philadelphia Municipal Retirement System · PA | 62.2% | 65.4% | +3.1 |
| Minnesota Teachers Retirement Association · MN | 76.8% | 79.9% | +3.1 |
Largest declines
The same test in the other direction. A plan can appear here while its assets grow: if the accrued liability grew faster, the ratio falls anyway, and the split says so.
| Plan | FY2023 | FY2024 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oklahoma Police Pension and Retirement System · OK | 106.1% | 96.5% | -9.6 |
| Austin Fire · TX | 85.6% | 76.9% | -8.7 |
| Knox County Teachers' DB Plan · TN | 80.5% | 74.3% | -6.2 |
| St. Louis Firemen · MO | 94.0% | 89.6% | -4.5 |
| Houston Firefighters Relief and Retirement Fund · TX | 97.2% | 93.3% | -3.8 |
| Miami General and Sanitation Employees · FL | 72.6% | 69.3% | -3.3 |
| Oklahoma City Employee Retirement System · OK | 101.4% | 98.3% | -3.1 |
| Fairfax County Police · VA | 81.5% | 78.9% | -2.6 |
| New York State and Local Retirement Systems · NY | 97.4% | 94.9% | -2.6 |
| Fairfax County Employees' Retirement System · VA | 73.7% | 71.4% | -2.4 |
| Montgomery County Employees Retirement System · MD | 98.6% | 96.3% | -2.3 |
| Missouri State Employees Retirement System · MO | 57.6% | 55.3% | -2.3 |
| Kansas City Police · MO | 71.8% | 69.5% | -2.3 |
| Greenville Fire Pension Plan · SC | 90.2% | 88.1% | -2.1 |
| St. Louis Public School Retirement System · MO | 70.5% | 68.5% | -2.1 |
How the split is calculated
A funded ratio is actuarial assets divided by actuarial accrued liability, the benefits a plan has already promised. This board uses those three source-named PPD fields directly and drops a row whenever PPD’s reported ratio does not reconcile to its own dollars. With that matched triple in both years, a one-year change in the ratio can be attributed without joining mixed-basis fields:
- From assets: what the ratio would have done if only the assets had changed and the accrued liability had stayed at its prior-year figure.
- From liability: the remainder, meaning everything the change in accrued liability accounts for. The two add up to the total change exactly, by construction.
The hold-out test is a judgement about what accrued liability can plausibly do in twelve months, not a figure published by the source, and it is deliberately asymmetric. A rise is ordinary: accrued liability grows with interest and new accruals, and on this pair the large majority of plans reported an increase averaging in the mid single digits, and several plans that grew their liability sharply also grew their assets sharply, and those are growing plans, not restated ones, so they stay on the boards. A fall is the anomalous direction, because benefits already earned do not evaporate; a fall past 5% sits outside the pattern the dataset itself shows. A rise past 20% is held out too, as beyond any one-year accrual path. Every held-out plan is listed with its figures, so a reader can disagree with the cut and go read the plan directly.
Why the pair is not the newest year available
The comparison uses the two most recent years in which a majority of plans report a funded ratio and the assets and liability behind it. A release that publishes ratios alone cannot be checked against anything and cannot be decomposed, so it is not used here even when it is newer. The plan pages plot those ratios where they exist and label them as provisional.
What a change in funded ratio does not tell you
It is not a forecast of benefits, contributions, or taxes, and it is not a measure of whether a plan will meet its obligations. Funded ratios rest on each plan’s own return and mortality assumptions, and two plans using different assumptions are not strictly comparable even in the same year. Read a plan’s own valuation before drawing conclusions about it.
Every figure on PlainPension is rendered directly from the Public Plans Database (Boston College Center for Retirement Research), no number is typed in by an editor. This page computes each plan's funded-ratio change between the two most recent fully-reported years and splits it into asset and liability effects, live from the dataset. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the typed corrections pathway, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.