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…

This paper studies the pension preferences of Washington State public school teachers by examining two periods of time during which teachers were able to choose between enrolling in a traditional defined benefit plan and a hybrid plan with defined benefit and defined contribution components. Our findings suggest that a large share of teachers are…