Blended Retirement System: An Analysis of Marine Corps Officer Opt-In Rates by Military Occupational Specialty

In 2018, the National Defense Authorization Act created the Blended Retirement System (BRS), effectively removing the defined benefit plan and 20-year cliff-vesting requirement under the High-Three military retirement system. By removing the defined benefit plan and replacing it with a defined contribution plan, the BRS enables military members to separate prior to serving 20 years while having some form of retirement benefit that is easily transferable to other employers. As such, many constituents voiced concern that the BRS may cause long-term negative effects to both retention and accession missions. To determine whether military members chose to opt into the BRS due to their intent to separate from the service earlier, I use a military-to-civilian crosswalk for Marine Corps officer military occupational specialties (MOSs) to civilian standard occupational codes (SOCs). I then use Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data to match MOS-SOC wages to analyze whether higher or lower opt-in rates are observed in MOSs where civilian wages are higher or lower while also analyzing opt-in rates among critical-fill MOSs. By using a logistic regression model, I find that civilian wages and critical-fill MOSs have no statistically significant effects on BRS opt-in rates. Further study on the effects of BRS on retention is suggested, which may provide more insight to a members decision to opt in and the potential associated effects on future retention.