IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/umc/wpaper/2007.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Teachers Value Pension Wealth: A Reexamination of the Illinois Experience

Author

Listed:
  • Shawn Ni

    (Department of Economics, University of Missouri-Columbia)

  • Michael Podgursky

    (Department of Economics, University of Missouri-Columbia)

  • Fangda Wang

    (Department of Economics, University of Missouri-Columbia)

Abstract

In a widely-cited study, Fitzpatrick (2015) found that more than a quarter of Illinois teachers were unwilling to pay 19 cents for pension enhancements worth one dollar in present value. We revisit this finding by tracking the same cohort of teachers to retirement, which permits exact measurement of the annuity received and service years. The vast majority of teachers purchased the upgrade. Among the teachers who did not, the benefit on average had a negative value given their retirement timing. Our analysis finds that Fitzpatrick's instrumental variables fail to capture the underlying heterogeneity of preferences driving this result.

Suggested Citation

  • Shawn Ni & Michael Podgursky & Fangda Wang, 2020. "How Teachers Value Pension Wealth: A Reexamination of the Illinois Experience," Working Papers 2007, Department of Economics, University of Missouri.
    • Handle: RePEc:umc:wpaper:2007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gO44DKOPywy6OTyS2EkDEoXbHaN4yNwu/view?usp=sharing
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maria Donovan Fitzpatrick, 2015. "How Much Are Public School Teachers Willing to Pay for Their Retirement Benefits?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(4), pages 165-188, November.
    2. Maria D. Fitzpatrick & Michael F. Lovenheim, 2014. "Early Retirement Incentives and Student Achievement," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 120-154, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fuchsman, Dillon & McGee, Josh B. & Zamarro, Gema, 2023. "Teachers’ willingness to pay for retirement benefits: A national stated preferences experiment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Morrill, Melinda Sandler & Westall, John, 2019. "Social security and retirement timing: evidence from a national sample of teachers," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(4), pages 549-564, October.
    2. Laura D. Quinby, 2020. "Do Deferred Retirement Benefits Retain Government Employees?," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(2), pages 469-509, March.
    3. Dongwoo Kim & Cory Koedel & Wei Kong & Shawn Ni & Michael Podgursky & Weiwei Wu, 2021. "Pensions and Late-Career Teacher Retention," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 16(1), pages 42-65, Winter.
    4. Shawn Ni & Michael Podgursky & Fangda Wang, 2022. "How Much Are Public School Teachers Willing to Pay for Their Retirement Benefits? Comment," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 478-493, August.
    5. Patten Priestley Mahler, 2017. "Are Teacher Pensions "Hazardous" for Schools?," Upjohn Working Papers 18-281, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.
    6. Quinby, Laura D. & Wettstein, Gal, 2021. "Do deferred benefit cuts for current employees increase separation?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    7. Fuchsman, Dillon & McGee, Josh B. & Zamarro, Gema, 2023. "Teachers’ willingness to pay for retirement benefits: A national stated preferences experiment," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    8. Goda, Gopi Shah & Ramnath, Shanthi & Shoven, John B. & Slavov, Sita Nataraj, 2018. "The financial feasibility of delaying Social Security: evidence from administrative tax data," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(4), pages 419-436, October.
    9. Dan Goldhaber & Cyrus Grout, 2016. "Pension Choices and the Savings Patterns of Public School Teachers," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 11(4), pages 449-481, Fall.
    10. Kim, Dongwoo & Koedel, Cory & Xiang, P. Brett, 2021. "The trade-off between pension costs and salary expenditures in the public sector," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 151-168, January.
    11. Rauh, Joshua D. & Stefanescu, Irina & Zeldes, Stephen P., 2020. "Cost saving and the freezing of corporate pension plans," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    12. Aibo Gong, 2021. "Bounds for Treatment Effects in the Presence of Anticipatory Behavior," Papers 2111.06573, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2022.
    13. Adriana Ana Maria Davidescu & Monica Roman & Vasile Alecsandru Strat & Mihaela Mosora, 2019. "Regional Sustainability, Individual Expectations and Work Motivation: A Multilevel Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-23, June.
    14. Kim, Dongwoo, 2020. "Worker retirement responses to pension incentives: Do they respond to pension wealth?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 365-385.
    15. Papke, Leslie E., 2019. "Retirement choices by state and local public sector employees: the role of eligibility and financial incentives," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(4), pages 515-528, October.
    16. Ander Iraizoz, 2025. "Perception and Salience of Social Security Contribution Incentives: Evidence from Voluntary Contributions," CESifo Working Paper Series 11636, CESifo.
    17. Jeffrey R. Brown & Arie Kapteyn & Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Olivia S. Mitchell & Anya Samek, 2021. "Behavioral Impediments to Valuing Annuities: Complexity and Choice Bracketing," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(3), pages 533-546, July.
    18. Sun, Liyang & Abraham, Sarah, 2021. "Estimating dynamic treatment effects in event studies with heterogeneous treatment effects," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 225(2), pages 175-199.
    19. Figlio, D. & Karbownik, K. & Salvanes, K.G., 2016. "Education Research and Administrative Data," Handbook of the Economics of Education,, Elsevier.
    20. Arthur Seibold & Sebastian Seitz & Sebastian Siegloch, 2025. "Privatizing Disability Insurance," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2025_640, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    teacher's value of pension wealth; unobserved heterogeneity; state and local pension finance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:umc:wpaper:2007. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chao Gu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edumous.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.