During the late 1990s public pension funds across the United States accrued large actuarial surpluses. The seemingly flush conditions of the pension funds led legislators in most states to substantially improve retirement benefits for public workers, including teachers. In this study we examine the benefit enhancements to the teacher pension…

Traditional defined benefit (DB) pension systems in many states face large funding shortfalls. Movement toward defined contribution (DC) pension structures may reduce the likelihood of future shortfalls, but there is concern that such reforms may have the undesirable effect of increasing employee turnover. In studying patterns of employee turnover…

Based on in-depth interviews, surveys and autoethnography we explore ways in which staff responded to the COVID-19 pandemic in three Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) based in Kenya (University of Nairobi), Mexico (El Colegio de la Frontera Sur) and the United Kingdom (University of Leeds). HEIs are dependent on staff's resilience and goodwill…

This paper examines the savings behavior of public school teachers who are enrolled in a hybrid pension plan that includes a defined contribution (DC) component. Few states have incorporated DC features into teacher pension systems and little is known about how providing teachers with greater control over deferred compensation might affect their…

Illinois' pension plans have sent the state on a downward spiral. One out of every four dollars that state taxpayers send to Springfield goes toward pensions, and the vast majority of these contributions go toward paying down large pension debt, not the actual retirement benefits given to state and local workers like teachers. The teacher pension…

In 2015, the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) conducted a survey of community college chief executive officers (CEOs) to collect their opinions on current issues, and gather information on their compensation. This report provides the results from this survey. The AACC CEO Survey was sent to 960 public community college presidents.…

This paper examines a natural experiment in which Washington State teachers were offered the opportunity to choose between enrolling in a traditional defined benefit (DB) plan and a hybrid plan with defined benefit and defined contribution (DC) components. We find plan preference is weakly related to estimates of the relative financial benefits of…

The California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) has been grossly underfunded for the past decade. State policymakers have responded by cutting plan benefits for new hires and raising teachers' required plan contributions. These changes, however, have undermined teachers' retirement income security. Only 35 percent of new hires will…

Swiss society is ageing. At the same time, life expectancy is increasing. With most workers retiring around age 65, time in retirement is growing and the ratio of retirees to employees is set to soar. These developments bring a range of opportunities but will likely weigh on growth in GDP per capita and increase public spending. They may also…

Rising costs of public employee pension plans are a source of fiscal stress in many cities and states and have led to calls for reform. To assess the economic consequences of plan changes it is important to have reliable statistical models of employee retirement behavior. The authors estimate a structural model of teacher retirement using…

The Teachers' Retirement System of the State of Illinois is one of the worst-funded public pensions in the nation. In 2013, it held enough assets to cover only 41 percent of its future obligations (Buck Consultants, 2014). This shortfall has led to several reforms, mostly involving benefit cuts that have undermined retirement income security for…

Why aren't teacher salaries rising? This puzzle can be explained by three trends eating into teachers' take-home pay: rising health care costs, declining student/teacher ratios, and rising retirement costs. Retirement costs are the most hidden of these three factors. The result is that most teachers are getting the worst of both worlds. Teachers…

Several studies have argued that teacher pensions are a raw deal for most teachers and should be replaced with account-style plans. This report examines research that most teachers working today are building a secure retirement. According to the author, the myth that most teachers get a raw deal while a lucky few receive generous pensions is based…

State-specific licensing policies and pension plans create mobility costs for educators who cross state lines. We empirically test whether these costs affect production in schools--a hypothesis that follows directly from economic theory on labor frictions--using geocoded data on school locations and state boundaries. We find that achievement is…

Although decades of research highlight the impact of schooling on earnings, less evidence exists regarding other employment outcomes. Nonwage labor market returns to education are important in the United States, where health insurance and retirement income are typically tied to employment. Using longitudinal, nationally representative data, we…