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…

In this paper, we present an analysis of the Arkansas Teacher Retirement System (ATRS) pension plan and an empirical investigation of the behavioral response to that plan, as well as to a possible reform plan. We begin by describing the plan parameters and discussing the incentives these parameters create. We then estimate the effect of pension…

The retirement behavior of Pennsylvania public school teachers in 1997-98 and 1998-99, a period when state early retirement incentives were temporarily increased, is modeled using a choice framework that emphasizes both pecuniary and nonpecuniary factors of the retirement decision under a defined benefit retirement plan. We find each to have large…

Findings of three reports on the potential impact of age 70 mandatory retirement legislation on the arts and sciences faculties of institutions belonging to the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE) are summarized. In a report by J. Russell Southworth et al., faculty flow (departures, new appointments, appointments to tenure, etc.) is…

A description of the University of Southern California (USC) faculty model and some of the results obtained from using the model are presented. The model traces faculty cohorts from 1974 to 1984, under given policies of hiring, tenure, promotion, and retirement. The model takes into account resignations, deaths, anticipated enrollments, and costs.…