Because La Grange, Ill Used Bad Life Expectancy Assumptions, Does That Mean the Country Faces a Pension Crisis?

That's what a NYT article seemed to be telling people. The center of the story is the fact that it appears that La Grange, Ill (population 15,550) was using grossly out of date mortality tables in calculating the pension obligations for its police and fire fighters. Without directly saying as much, the piece implies that this is a common problem with much larger pension funds and that such practices are the basis for the underfunding of many public sector pensions.

In fact, the main reason th...