February 2018

The decline in defined benefit plans has not led to a decline in retirement security.
Congressional Democrats repeat teachers’ union talking points, ignoring a large and growing body of work about the problems with teacher pension plans.
A new study of the Massachusetts Teachers’ Retirement System (MTRS), Robert Costrell and Dillon Fuchsman from the University of Arkansas finds that 74 percent of educators are pension “losers.”

Teacher pension funds across the country are in trouble. They are hundreds of billions of dollars in debt. To make ends meet, many states have raised the vesting period and increased how much teachers have to contribute to their retirement. Despite these changes, state pension funds fail to provide all new teachers with sufficient retirement benefits.