Three Essays on Teacher Labor Markets

Teaching, Teachers Pensions and Retirement across Recent Cohorts of College Graduate Women

“…Another threequarters of teachers who reach normal retirement age began collecting benefits at that point.Therefore, nearly 90 percent of career teachers have retired by the normal retirement age in teaching, which, as I described, is at an earlier age in most states than the early retirement age in Social Security. Other researchers show that pension eligibility leads to similar increases in retirement using state administrative data(Brown 2013;Koedel et al 2014;Mahler 2014). For example, in Missouri, the median retirement age is 57(Koedel et al 2014).Finally, in addition to pensions, there is one other notable piece of retirement-related compensation available for former public school teachers (and other public sector workers) that -10-is not as widely available for workers in the private sector: retiree health insurance.…”