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Don't mess with public pensions. Unless, that is, you wantsmall towns and rural communities to suffer. That could be one wayto interpret some of the findings of a report from the National Institute onRetirement Security.

The report reveals that not only do such communities experiencean outsized benefit from those pensions, compared to major citiesand metropolitan areas, but those same dollars also make up"significant amounts" of the total personal income of therecipients themselves.

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The study found that in 2018, public pension benefit dollarsaccounted for anywhere from one to three percent of gross domesticproduct, on average, among the counties and states studied.

With younger people moving to larger cities and metropolitanareas in pursuit of higher-paying jobs, that leaves older people inplace in many towns and counties—which have shrunk accordingly.

In many of these smaller places, the study says, the largestemployer is often a public entity, such as a school district—andusually among the benefits offered is a defined contribution plan.Since many of the employees of such public entities remain in theircommunities once they retire, and collect and spend their pensionsthere, that has the effect of keeping money in the community whenthose retirees spend their pensions at local businesses.

While on average, between 2000 and 2018, rural counties havelost population, small town counties and metropolitan counties havegained population. And rural counties and counties that containstate capitals have the highest percentages of their populationsreceiving public pension benefits.

The report says that counties containing state capitals areoutliers from other metropolitan counties, however, and it'sprobably due to a higher density of public employees and thelikelihood that most of them stay in those counties once theyretire.

And while small town counties get more of a bang from the buckscoming from pension benefit dollars in terms of both GDP and totalpersonal income than do rural or metropolitan counties, ruralcounties see higher benefits from personal income than dometropolitan counties while the latter instead derive more benefitin terms of GDP than rural counties.

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