Social Security and Retirement Timing: Evidence from a National Sample of Teachers

Abstract

This paper was originally prepared for the NBER Conference, Incentives and Limitations of Employment Policies on Retirement Transitions, funded by the Sloan Foundation. The authors would like to thank the Sloan Foundation for their support of this work. The paper will be included in a special issue of the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance. We thank our discussant, Cory Koedel, and conference participants for useful comments and suggestions. All remaining errors are our own. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Retirement Choices by State and Local Public Sector Employees: The Role of Eligibility and Financial Incentives

“…In what follows, I adopt this forward-looking approach and construct the peak value measure for public pensions to capture the public pension incentive effects of working longer. Morrill and Westall (2018) use cross sectional data from the American Community Survey (ACS) to study the influence of Social Security coverage for public school teachers.…”

“…Morrill and Westall (2018) discuss the Social Security coverage status of teachers and provide analysis of retirement effects. For further discussion, seeDoherty et al (2012).…”

Retirement choices by state and local public sector employees: the role of eligibility and financial incentives

“…Morrill and Westall (2018) use cross-sectional data from the American Community Survey (ACS) to study the influence of Social Security coverage for public school teachers. ACS data on pension incentives are limited – they approximate ‘theoretical eligibility’ for retirement from the public sector job by comparing the age of the teacher with the pension plan's earliest full retirement age.…”

“… 8 Morrill and Westall (2018) discuss the Social Security coverage status of teachers and provide analysis of retirement effects. For further discussion, see Doherty et al (2012).…”

The Effect of Social Security Coverage on U.S. State and Local Government Public Pension Plan Funding

“…Although Social Security is a massive federal pension program, approximately 25% of public employees are not covered by it. Most of them are public safety employees and teachers (Morrill & Westall, 2018) who are covered by state and local public pension plans, which operate under additional constraints. A public pension plan whose beneficiaries do not pay into Social Security must meet the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) “Safe Harbor” provision.…”