During the late 1990s public pension funds across the United States accrued large actuarial surpluses. The seemingly flush conditions of the pension funds led legislators in most states to substantially improve retirement benefits for public workers, including teachers. In this study we examine the benefit enhancements to the teacher pension…

Teachers in England and Wales are involved in the largest campaign of industrial action since the mid-1980s. At the heart of their grievances are government plans to abolish a national framework for teachers' pay and the removal of important safeguards relating to working conditions. Wider questions of workload and pensions are also involved. This…

In 2010, the pension plans of state and local governments came under increased scrutiny in response to their generally weak financial positions and mounting costs to taxpayers. By some measures, these funds are as much as $3 trillion short of the assets they would need to cover the promises they have made to government workers and retirees.…

This article examines the pattern of incentives for work versus retirement in six state teacher pension systems. We do this by examining the annual accrual of pension wealth from an additional year of work over a teacher's career. Accrual of wealth is highly nonlinear and heavily loaded at arbitrary years that would normally be considered…

Pensions have long been an important part of compensation for teachers in public schools. However, the incentive structures of teacher pension systems are not widely understood, even though they can have powerful effects on the composition of the teaching force and on public finance. In their research, the authors have found that teacher pension…