“Moody’s Investors Service, dissatisfied with the way states measure what they owe their retirees, released its own numbers on Thursday, showing that the 50 states have, in aggregate, just 48 cents for every dollar in pensions they have promised.

“That is much less than the 74 cents on the dollar that the states now report, suggesting the states are short by about $980 billion, with many local governments, like school districts, being on the hook for additional billions that they have not disclosed at all.

“The disparity suggests that politically difficult steps taken recently by many states to fix their pension problems — raising retirement ages, requiring bigger contributions from workers, lowering benefits for new hires — will prove insufficient, because they were based on underestimates of the problem.”

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