Many states enhanced benefits in teacher retirement plans during the 1990s. This paper examines the school staffing effects of one such enhancement in a major urban school district with mostly high poverty schools. Pension rule changes in 1999 for St. Louis public school teachers resulted in large increases in pension wealth for active teachers, as well as a powerful increase in ‘push’ incentives for earlier retirement. Simple descriptive statistics on retirement patterns before and after the enhancements suggest much earlier retirement resulted. Shorter teaching spells imply a steady state with more teacher turnover and a larger share of novice teachers in classrooms. To better understand the long-run effects of these changes and alternative policies, the authors estimate a structural model of teacher retirement. Simulations of retirement behavior for representative senior teachers point to shorter completed teaching spells and earlier retirement age as a result of the enhancements. By contrast, moving from the post-1999 to a DC-type plan would extend the teaching career of a representative senior teacher by roughly two years.

许多州在 1990 年代提高了教师退休计划的福利。本文研究了在一个主要城市学区中，这种增强措施对学校人员配备的影响，其中大部分学校都是高度贫困的学校。1999 年圣路易斯公立学校教师的养老金规则变化导致在职教师的养老金财富大幅增加，以及提前退休的“推动”激励措施的大幅增加。增强前后退休模式的简单描述性统计表明，退休的结果要早得多。较短的教学周期意味着稳定的状态，教师流动率更高，课堂中新手教师的比例更大。为了更好地理解这些变化和替代政策的长期影响，作者估计了教师退休的结构模型。对具有代表性的高级教师的退休行为进行的模拟表明，由于增强功能，完成的教学时间更短，退休年龄更早。相比之下，从 1999 年后转向 DC 型计划将使代表性高级教师的教学生涯延长大约两年。