The largest employment impacts were seen in the food services, real estate, health care and retail trade sectors.

Dr. Patricia Pacey, president of Pacey & McNulty Economic Group, helped the Public Employees' Retirement Association of Colorado conduct a study of PERA's impact on local economies. What it found is that the dollars spent by retirees had a huge effect on local economies, particularly in rural areas where the diversity of jobs and industries is slim.

Those dollars "make a very important contribution to those economies surviving and not just disappearing into ghost towns," Pacey said during a panel discussion at the NIRS conference in Washington, D.C. on March 6.

The PERA study looked at the pension benefits that PERA recipients receive as a percentage of payroll and benefits going out on an annual basis. In the Denver metro area, PERA benefits payments were 3.3 percent of total payroll, but in rural areas, like Pueblo-Southern Mountains and the San Luis Valley, that amount was 14.3 percent and 12.1 percent respectively. In some Colorado counties, more than 25 percent of income in the county came from pensioners as a percentage of payroll. In those cases, the money pensioners spend is the "bread and butter" of those communities, Pacey said.

The PERA report found that the total impact of pensioner money spent was $3 billion to the state of Colorado, which then trickles down into $4.3 billion in output, $1.87 billion in value added for the state and regions, $1 billion in labor income, 23,399 jobs and $231.9 million in state and local tax revenue.

Pension plans act as an automatic stabilizer in a poor economy, said Boivie. In 2009, when the financial markets were in turmoil, retirees receiving pension benefits were still able to go out and spend money on basic goods and services because they had a guaranteed paycheck each month, she said.

In contrast, many folks with defined contribution plans saw their retirement dollars drop by 30 percent because of the economy, which forced many of them to cut back on their expenditures in the community by the same amount, she added.

Social Security benefits have the same effect, she said. According to a report by Dr. Roberto Gallardo of the Southern Rural Development Center, in partnership with the Center for Rural Strategies and funded through a grant from the National Academy of Social Insurance, Social Security payments had an economic output of $1.2 trillion nationally, created 8.4 million American jobs and provided $157 billion in tax revenue in 2009.

"Economic Impact of Social Security in the United States," which was released in the fall of 2011, focused on old age survivor disability insurance benefits and the role they play in providing a stable source of income for communities in which the recipients live and spend their benefits checks.

According to the Social Security Trustees Report, 4.8 percent of the nation's gross domestic product during 2010 came from these cash benefits.

In 2009, more than 51 million people received OASDI payments, which amount to 16.7 percent of the total population for that same year. Total OASDI disbursements for 2009 were around $675 billion dollars, which accounted for 5.5 percent of total personal income and resulted in an average per capita payment of $2,199, according to the report.

The report also calculated the economic impact of a reduction in OASDI payments. A 5 percent reduction would decrease the nation's economic output by $63 billion, about 419,000 jobs would be lost and tax revenue would decrease by $7.8 billion. A 10 percent reduction would reduce output by $126 billion, eliminate 840,000 jobs and reduce tax revenue by $15 billion. A 15 percent reduction in benefits payments would reduce the nation's economic output by $190 billion, eliminate 1.2 million jobs and decrease tax revenue by $23 billion.