15 “The U.S. Civil Service Re- tirement and Disability Fund (retirement fund) has just 48 percent of assets needed to cover future pensions for retired and active federal employees.” III. US PENSION FUND ASSETS Related Links • Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) • Defined Benefit Plans • Defined Contribution plans • 401(k) • 403(b) • 457 • Federal Employees Retirement Systems Thrift Savings Plan • Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation The OECD figures for the United States include private pension funds, individual re- tirement accounts, state and local government employee retirement funds, federal govern- ment retirement funds and annuity reserves at life insurance companies. Again, data sources in the United States for these different areas are non-conforming. With that caveat, let’s look at a variety of estimated breakdowns. As of the end of 2016, Pension & Investments reported on data compiled by the Investment Company Institute that U.S retirement assets totaled $25.3 trillion. IRAs were the largest component with an estimated $7.85 trillion in assets. Defined contribution plans were $7.03 trillion; government defined benefit plans were $5.46 trillion, private sector defined benefit plans were $2.9 trillion and annuity reserves were $2 trillion. Within the Defined Contri- butions (“DC”), 401(k) plans accounted for $4.8 trillion of the $7.03 trillion in assets. Other private sector DC plans had $550 bil- lion in assets, $905 billion was in 403(b) plans, $282 billion was held by 457 plans and $467 billion in assets were in the Federal Employees Retirement System’s Thrift Savings Plan. The Milliman survey of the top 100 corporate pension funds reports: “These pension plans finished 2016 with pension assets of $1.395 trillion and projected benefit obligations (“PBO”) of $1.718 trillion. The funded ratio at the end of 2016 was 81.2%.” According to Public Plans Data, the combined value of defined benefit plan assets held by state and local governments as of Q4 2016 was $3.85 trillion based on the Federal Re- serve Flow of Funds report, September 2017. Public Plan Data states that there are 299 state-administered plans and 5,977 locally administered plans, however, their database is comprised of 170 state and local plans which represent 95% of the market. In 2016 these pension funds had $3.31 trillion in assets against $4.58 trillion of liabilities. They were 72% funded, which had steadily declined from 102 % funding in 2001. It appears that assets have grown 52.2% from 2001 to 2016, but during this time liabilities have grown 115.5%. According to a 2016 report addressing federal plans from Moody’s: The unfunded liabilities of the various federal employee pensions systems, covering civilian and military employee benefits, amount to about $3.5 trillion, or 20% of US GDP. Additional- ly, Moody’s estimates that unfunded state and local government pension plan liabilities are of the same magnitude, bringing the total shortfall to 40% of GDP….The bigger challenge to the US comes from the unfunded liabilities for the Social Security and Medicare programs. The Social Security funding gap is estimated at $13.4 trillion, or 75% of GDP, while the shortfall from the Hospital Insurance compo- nent of the Medicare program amounts $3.2 trillion, or 18% of GDP. Tom McKinney, posting at Bill Bergman’s blog at Truth in Accounting, posted the assets for the US Civil Service Retirement and Dis- ability Fund as of 2015: The U.S. Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund (retirement fund) has just 48 percent of assets needed to cover future pen- sions for retired and active federal employees. Currently, there are 2.6 million retired and 2.7 million active federal civilians enrolled, including US Postal Service personnel. As of September 30, 2015, the retirement fund