News release: “State and local government defined-benefit employee retirement systems paid $168 billion to 7.5 million retirees and survivors in fiscal year 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. This is a $12 billion increase from the previous year when 7.3 million received payments. There were 2,547 retirement systems in 2007, with memberships of 18.6 million people who could be eligible for regular benefit payments in the future…The Internet tables are from the State and Local Government Public Employee Retirement Systems Census for fiscal year 2007…For more information on the data limitations, definitions and methodology, see http://www.census.gov/govs/www/retire07content.html.”