While educators are eager to forget the financial woes of the past two years and return to the familiar routine of steady budget increases, the fiscal outlook for America's fourteen thousand school districts is bleak--not just for next year, but for a half decade or more. This calls for a new mindset among educators and an unfamiliar,…

Health care professionals tending to patients with inner ear disease face inquiries about therapy options, including treatments that are being developed for future use but not yet available. The devastating outcome of sensorineural hearing loss, combined with the permanent nature of the symptoms, make these inquiries demanding and frequent. The…

Most public elementary and high school teachers are covered by health insurance provided by their employer while they are employed. In most cases, these health plans are managed at the state level. At retirement, teachers with sufficient years of service are allowed to remain in the health plan. Retiree health plans for teachers vary widely across…

Thirty interviews were conducted with individuals across the UK who had retired between two and ten years ago, with the aim of exploring the variability of retirement experiences in terms of (a) retirement antecedents/reasons for retirement, (b) change in wellbeing and satisfaction over time, (c) personal relationships and (d) retirement guidance.…

Using the first nationally representative birth cohort study in Taiwan, this paper examines the role that maternity leave policy in Taiwan plays in the timing of mothers returning to work after giving birth, as well as the extent to which this timing is linked to the amount of time mothers spend with their children and their use of breast milk…

This paper analyzes a puzzling aspect of retirement behavior known as "unretirement." Nearly 50 percent of retirees follow a nontraditional retirement path that involves partial retirement or unretirement, and at least 26 percent of retirees later unretire. I explore two possible explanations: (1) unretirement transitions result from failures in…

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,…

After years of non-stop increases--national k-12 per-pupil spending is up by "one-third" in inflation-adjusted dollars since 1995--schools now face the near-certainty of repeated annual budget cuts for the first time since the Great Depression. In some states and districts, reductions will be dramatic--well into the double digits. And…

There is a large and robust correlation between adult health and education, part of which likely reflects causality running from education into health. Less clear is whether education obtained later in life is as valuable for health as are earlier years of schooling, or whether education raises health directly or through income or wealth. In this…

Consistent with the global trend to shift responsibility for retirement income provision from the public purse to individuals has been encouragement to save more and to manage investment strategy. Analyzing data from 2,300 respondents to a randomly distributed questionnaire, this article focuses on the motivational importance of social norms. The…

This report is part of a series of reports that provides information on the structure, function, finances, taxation, employment, and pension systems of the United States' approximately 90,000 state and local governments. This report presents data on state and local government employment and payroll based on information collected by the 2013 Annual…

Purpose: To evaluate whether medical student participation in TimeSlips (TS), a creative group-based storytelling program, with persons affected by dementia would improve student attitudes toward this patient population. Design and Methods: Fifteen fourth-year medical students from Penn State College of Medicine participated in a month-long…

This instructional tool draws a linkage between the journal entries required to record the activity of a defined benefit pension plan and the disclosures required under authoritative guidance. The quarterly and year-end adjusting entries are presented and linked to the financial statements and supplemental financial disclosures. These entries…

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…

Retirement today is a complex and challenging process. People live longer after they retire and must adapt continuously to meet financial and personal needs. Retirees need a plan in preparation for retirement and in retirement so they can feel fulfilled, active, and productive, not to mention financially independent. This is particularly true of…