The public pension systems in the United States provide retirement security for teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public servants.  Despite record stock market results in the past few years, many U.S. public pension funds today remain underfunded.  

Spectrem decided to explore pension fund members' awareness of the underfunded status of their pension funds and determine if they were worried about not receiving anticipated pension payments.  Spectrem sought to find out if pension members were aware of the amount of political and/or social investments within the fund as well as the level of alternative investments.