Benefits and beneficiaries under public employee retirement systems, calendar year 1977.

During calendar year 1977, Federal, State, and local government retirement systems paid $27.4 billion to 5.0 million persons, of whom 4.3 million were retired employees and 0.7 million were employees’ survivors. Federal Government retirement programs accounted for about two-thirds of all benefits paid ($18.4 billion) and slightly more than half the number of beneficiaries (2.7 million). State and local government systems paid $9.0 billion to 2.3 million beneficiaries. The Federal civil service retirement system, four small separate Federal systems, and the 2,300-odd State and local systems surveyed by the Census of Governments are contributory-that is, systems to which some or all of the covered employees made contributions. In 1977, the contributory systems accounted for 68 percent of all benefits paid and for 75 percent of all beneficiaries. The high percentage of beneficiaries in relation to benefit dollars reflects the lower average benefits paid under State and local programs. Eight noncontributory Federal systems, the largest of which is the military retirement program, paid 32 percent of benefits to the remaining one-fourth of the beneficiaries. Table 1 contains a breakdown of each retirement system by reason for receipt of benefits (risk) in 1977. Table 2 shows year-to-year changes in the percentage distribution of benefits and beneficiaries. The distribution of benefits by type changed only slightly from year to year. Between 1967 and 1977, there was an upward shift of approximately one-half of one percentage point per year in age-and-service benefits-from 75.1 percent in 1967 to 79.5 percent in 1977; disability benefits declined at about half that rate, from 15.3 percent to 12.8 percent. Monthly survivor benefits remained stable at 6.5-7.0 percent in that decade, and lump-sum survivor benefits declined