Recipients of benefits from the University of California Retirement Plan (UCRP) and UC-PERS Plus 5 Plan are receiving a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), effective July 1 and appearing in checks paid at the end of July.
The 2015 adjustment is based on the 1.33 percent average increase in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) measured February 2014 to February 2015 for the Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas.
The July 1, 2015 COLA rates for UCRP and UC-PERS Plus 5 benefit recipients, including those receiving survivor and UCRP disability income, are:
UCRP benefit recipients are eligible to receive a COLA after receiving benefits for at least one year. Therefore, members whose retirement or disability date is after July 1, 2014, are not yet eligible to receive a COLA.
The UCRP COLA formula generally matches the cumulative increase in the Consumer Price Index up to 2 percent annually. This year, some groups of benefit recipients will receive a larger COLA than the 1.33 percent CPI increase. The larger COLA helps those UCRP benefit recipients retain more of their purchasing power by partially making up for earlier years of inflation greater than 2 percent that were not matched by the UCRP COLA.
This story was originally published by the University of California news site UCnet.
