The purpose of the study was to explore retirement planning, challenges, and counseling among teachers of public schools in the Sekondi Circuit in the Western Region, Ghana. A sample of 50 teachers was selected through convenience sampling. Only teachers who expressed interest in participating in the study were sampled. The main instrument for…

There's not a school business official in the country who isn't dealing with budget cuts and trying to do more with less. This article shares some proven strategies to help school districts reduce spending and address personnel issues associated with retirement plans. Because public education employers are exempt from the Employee Retirement…

In the wake of the economic downturn that began in 2008, public schools face serious and seemingly long-term fiscal challenges. Rising pension costs are a particular concern for school districts, whose dollars help prop up state retirement plans that often have substantial unfunded liabilities. Yet public school districts have no alternatives;…

In the first of two rounds of interviews, 12 Social Security Administration (SSA) beneficiaries, all of whom professed a desire to work, discussed their perspectives on barriers to employment. Two years later, 8 of the 12 engaged in a second round of interviews. Only 1 of the 8 participants had succeeded in becoming self-supporting. After a review…

Purpose: As part of an ongoing effort to analyze the distributional implications of potential policy reforms to the U.S. Social Security system, we consider the widely discussed reform of earnings sharing. Such an approach has been viewed as a way to "update" Social Security's family benefits based on marital status and as a means to…

About 25 percent of faculty working in the United States will reportedly consider retiring in the next five to seven years. As one of this 25 percent, the author has been researching what she needs to know to retire. What she found initially was a lot of misinformation. To complicate matters, the world has changed over the past year, causing those…

Purpose: This study compared the official poverty rate for adults aged 65 years and older with alternative measures that portray the true resources and needs of older adults. Design and Methods: The analysis used data from the 2004 Health and Retirement Study on income, assets, in-kind transfers, and out-of-pocket medical expenses. It also…

After a long decline, the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR) of older men in the United States leveled off in the 1980s, and began to increase in the late 1990s. We examine how changes in Social Security rules affected these trends. We attribute only a small portion of the decline from the 1960s-80s to the increasing generosity of Social…

Analysis and discussion of Social Security policy are usually based on expected fiscal and societal outcomes. However, future demographic and economic trends are uncertain, and thus ultimate outcomes for aggregate system financial flows and the distribution of taxes and benefits across generations are uncertain. This paper analyzes a…

The labor supply and benefit claiming incentives provided by the early retirement rules of the Social Security Old Age benefits program are of growing importance as the Normal Retirement Age (NRA) increases to 67, the labor force participation of Older Americans rises, and a variety of reforms to the Social Security system are considered. Any…

Coordinating the two sources of retirement income--private pensions and Social Security--tends to lower employer costs and result in private pensions that replace a larger percentage of preretirement income for higher-paid workers. (Author/SK)

In this paper the authors examine how the structures of earnings, Social Security, and pension benefits affect retirement behavior. They use an intertemporal model of labor supply, paying special attention to the institutional features of private pensions and Social Security benefits. (Author/SSH)

Work attachment of men aged 58-63 fell dramatically from 1969-89, with a sharp reduction at age 62 that is probably due to Social Security's early retirement provision. Nonpension income and the interaction between private pensions, personal assets, and Social Security may also play a large role. (SK)

Recent studies of retirement have recognized the importance of pension plans and social security on the retirement decisions. A pension system that is neutral with respect to the timing of benefits encourages or discourages the acceptance of these benefits and subsequent job separation at any particular age only to the extent that any asset…

Briefly outlines the reasons some school districts are withdrawing from the social security system. Also notes some advantages of the social security system over alternative plans. (IRT)