Teacher Pensions Cost $1K per Pupil

The crippling explosion of pension costs for the Chicago Public Schools has captured national attention. Although the Chicago case is extreme, the problem is widespread. Pension costs are rising across the country, even after several years of recovery from the market crash of 2007-09. A natural measure of the rise in costs is the rise in real per pupil expenditures for employer pension contributions. In this blog, I provide what I believe to be the first estimates of employer pension costs per pupil for the nation as a whole. I estimate that nationally these costs have more than doubled in the last decade, from about $500 per pupil in 2004 (in $2015) to over $1,000 today. This does not include contributions to Social Security, the costs of retiree health benefits, or the pension contributions of the school employees themselves. 

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