A special exemption from the 1986 Age Discrimination Act allowed colleges and universities to enforce mandatory retirement of faculty at age 70 until 1994. We compare faculty turnover rates at a large sample of institutions before and after the federal law change, and at a set of institutions that were covered by earlier state laws prohibiting compulsory retirement. Retirement rates at institutions that enforced mandatory retirement exhibited sharp 'spikes' at ages 70 and 71. About 90 percent of professors who were still teaching at age 70 retired within two years. After the elimination of compulsory retirement the retirement rates of 70 and 71-year-olds fell to levels comparable to 69-year-olds, and over one-half of 70-year-olds were still teaching two years later. These findings indicate that U.S. colleges and universities will experience a rise in the number of older faculty over the coming years. The increase is likely to be larger at private research universities, where a higher fraction of faculty has traditionally remained at work until age 70.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
file. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
8378.
Length: Date of creation: Jul 2001 Date of revision: Publication status: published as Ashenfelter, Orley and David Card. "Did The Elimination Of Mandatory Retirement Affect Faculty Retirement?," American Economic Review, 2002, v92(4,Sep), 957-980. Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8378
Note: LS Contact details of provider: Postal: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A. Phone: 617-868-3900 Email: Web page: http://www.nber.org More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: ().
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)