Basics on state employees' pension funds

Who's Covered 682,000 employees and retirees

The Funds Public School Employees' Retirement System, or PSERS; covers mostly teachers and others in education. State Employees' Retirement System, or SERS; covers a range of state workers, including judges, lawmakers, outside entities such as Penn State.

Combined Assets About $90 billion.

How Annual Benefits Are Calculated For most, it's final average salary times years of service times 2.5 percent. Cash withdrawals and survivor benefits can lower pensions.

Average Annual Benefits Just over $19,000 for school employees retiring at normal age or taking early retirement (June 2004), and for state employees retiring at normal age (December 2005).

Payouts In 2005 School fund, $3.9 billion; state employee fund, $1.9 billion.

Health Benefits It currently costs the state government more than $500 million annually to provide its retirees with health care, along with millions more for separate health-insurance plans for retired employees from the judicial branch, the House of Representatives and the state Senate.

The school retirement fund sponsors a voluntary group health insurance program funded by participants' premiums that gets no direct funding by the pension system or its participating employers. It also offers a "premium assistance" benefit to eligible members of up to $100 a month that is employer-funded; it currently costs taxpayers about $80 million a year.

Sources Of Money In last decade, about 80 percent of the funds' income has come from investments. The remainder is funded by employees and what their employers pay into the systems.

Funding Levels Public-school fund, 84 percent; state-employee fund, 93 percent. Recent average funding level for 58 state funds, 80 percent.