Why Social Investing Threatens Public Employee Pension Funds
Jon Entine | Blackwell Publishing
October 01, 2007
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Papers and Studies

The following article appears as a chapter in Corporate Retirement Security (Blackwell Publishing, October 2007), edited by Robert Kolb.

Public pension fund assets over recent decades have grown far faster proportionately than the assets of other significant investor categories. State and local government pension funds collectively hold almost $2 trillion in assets in approximately 2,600 public pension funds. Another $897 billion is held in federal retirement accounts. The vast majority of these funds are defined-benefit plans whose main goal is to provide a specific level of retirement benefits to approximately 20 million members, which include general government employees, teachers, police, and firefighters, and retirees. These funds have fulfilled a very important role by providing for the retirement security of public employees.

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Jon Entine is an adjunct fellow at AEI.

About the Author

 

Jon
Entine
  • Jon Entine, a former Emmy-winning producer for NBC News and ABC News, researches and writes about corporate responsibility and science and society. His books include No Crime But Prejudice: Fischer Homes, the Immigration Fiasco, and Extra-Judicial Prosecution (TFG Books, May 2009), about prosecutorial excesses; Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People (Grand Central Publishing, 2007), which focuses on the genetics of race; Let Them Eat Precaution: How Politics Is Undermining the Genetic Revolution in Agriculture (AEI Press, 2006), about the genetic modification of food and farming; Pension Fund Politics: The Dangers of Socially Responsible Investing (AEI Press, 2005), which reveals the effects of social investing on pension funds; and the best-selling Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk about It (Public Affairs, 2000), based on an award-winning NBC News documentary. Currently, Mr. Entine is an adviser to Global Governance Watch (GGW), a project that examines transparency and accountability issues at the United Nations (UN), in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and in related international organizations. GGW also analyzes the impact of UN agencies and NGOs on government and corporations. He is also working on a book exploring the revolutionary impact of genomic research on medical treatments and traditional perceptions of human limits and capabilities.
  • Phone: 513-319-8388
    Email: jentine@aei.org
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