This paper exploits a major, unanticipated reform of the California teachers' pension to provide quasi-experimental evidence on the link between pension generosity and retirement timing. Using two large administrative datasets, the author conducts a reduced-form analysis of the pension reform and estimates a structural model of retirement timing.…

The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to satisfy today's claimants in the here and now at the expense of long-term concerns. Teacher pensions, in particular, pose two challenges. The first is that political incentives invite irresponsible fiscal stewardship, as public officials make outsized short-term commitments to…

Plunges in the stock market have taken a toll on the fortunes of the nation's pension funds for retired teachers and other public employees, with retirement systems nationwide reporting losses in the billions of dollars in recent weeks. The losses have worsened already-high unfunded obligations for plans that have promised more than $2 trillion in…

Fueled by declining revenue from the housing crisis, skyrocketing energy costs, and an economy in general disarray, the public is pressuring school administrators to make broader and deeper cuts in their operating budgets. As the baby boomers retire, put their houses on the market, and downsize, one will see more downward price pressure on home…

Defined Benefit pension plans often generate odd time patterns of benefits. One typical pattern exhibits low accrual in early years, accelerating in mid-late years, followed by dramatic decline, or even negative returns in years that are relatively young for retirement. We consider four states for specific analysis: Arkansas, Missouri, California…

This paper is about the funding status of teachers' retirement pension schemes. Its goal is to relate the accounting for the funding of these pension obligations to the endemic, systematic, and fundamentally fraudulent system of accounting our country uses to assess the financial positions of federal, state, and local government as well as many…

The impending retirement of the baby boom cohort could pose dramatic challenges for the U.S. labor force for at least two reasons. First, the boomers--adults born between 1946 and 1964--are large in number. Second, boomers are relatively well educated. In this report we develop and analyze occupational and labor force projections to the year 2018,…

This study explores the differences among California's counties and regions in their needs for new school-site administrators in the coming decade, as driven by a combination of projected administrator retirements and projected student enrollment changes. The projected need for new school-site administrators, based solely on these combined…

The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to satisfy today's claimants in the here-and-now at the expense of long-term concerns. Rules and auditing standards are intended to tame this kind of short-sighted behavior in the private sector. In the public sector, the primary safeguard is the hope that public officials will not be…

Successful transitions involving a formal role for the former president, such as chancellor, are rare enough that the authors think theirs is an exceptional experience and is worth sharing, especially given the bulge of presidential retirements anticipated over the next decade. The authors believe that this model of transition can be successful,…

This article talks about the retired faculty members from different types of institutions around the country that were interviewed to find out how well their preparations for retirement are serving them now. Like other state employees in California, faculty members at public institutions participate in the California Public Employees' Retirement…

The current study proposes that personal need fulfillment (relatedness, generativity, identity, growth, and finances) predicts early and late retirement intentions. The personal needs of 160 full-time older employees were measured by personal goals, job satisfactions, job characteristics, and intrinsic motivation. Results suggest that the personal…

The tension at the heart of pension politics is the incentive to address today's claimants and focus on the here-and-now at the expense of long-term concerns and more dispersed constituencies. In the private sector, rules and regulations seek to tame corner-cutting and short-sighted behavior. In the public sector, the primary safeguard is the…

As districts face another year of budget gaps, hundreds of thousands of teachers have been warned that, come the end of the school year, their jobs may be gone. In a policy now termed "LIFO" or "last in, first out," most districts make layoff decisions based on seniority and not on job performance or effectiveness. Using…

In many parts of the United States, there is a growing shortage of music teachers to take the place of the retiring teachers. This is most evident in rural areas. If music teachers are not available to fill openings, music positions are sometimes combined, spreading music teachers too thin and requiring them to possess multiple music…