An Introduction to Police and Fire Pensions

The brief’s key findings are:

• Pension and retiree health benefits for public safety workers are more expensive than those of other local government workers, largely due to earlier retirement ages.
• Perhaps surprisingly, though, their retirement benefits make up only a very small share of total local government spending.
• Some evidence suggests that public safety workers could work longer, which may have implications for plans’ retirement age.
• However, raising retirement ages would have little impact on government finances, particularly since it might involve higher wages to maintain a quality workforce.