IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp16365.html

Why Has Science Become an Old Man's Game?

Author

Listed:
  • Fons-Rosen, Christian

    (University of California, Merced)

  • Gaule, Patrick

    (University of Bristol)

  • Hrendash, Taras

    (CERGE-EI)

Abstract

We investigate the causes and consequences of the aging of the scientific workforce. Using novel data on the population of US chemistry faculty members over fifty years, we find that the secular increase in the age of the academic workforce has been mainly driven by the slowdown in faculty hiring combined with later retirements. By contrast, changes in the age at which scientists start their careers only contribute to about 20% of aging. Hiring more new faculty members could rejuvenate the scientific workforce and boost scientific productivity.

Suggested Citation

  • Fons-Rosen, Christian & Gaule, Patrick & Hrendash, Taras, 2023. "Why Has Science Become an Old Man's Game?," IZA Discussion Papers 16365, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16365
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp16365.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Einiö, Elias & Feng, Josh & Jaravel, Xavier Laurent, 2022. "Social push and the direction of innovation," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 117951, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Philippe Aghion & Ufuk Akcigit & Ari Hyytinen & Otto Toivanen, 2017. "The social origins of inventors," CEP Discussion Papers dp1522, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    3. Levin, Sharon G & Stephan, Paula E, 1991. "Research Productivity over the Life Cycle: Evidence for Academic Scientists," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 114-132, March.
    4. Gaule, Patrick & Piacentini, Mario, 2018. "An advisor like me? Advisor gender and post-graduate careers in science," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(4), pages 805-813.
    5. Benjamin F. Jones, 2011. "As Science Evolves, How Can Science Policy?," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 11, pages 103-131, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Pierre Azoulay & Waverly Ding & Toby Stuart, 2007. "The Determinants of Faculty Patenting Behavior: Demographics or Opportunities?," NBER Chapters, in: Academic Science and Entrepreneurship: Dual Engines of Growth, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Nicholas Bloom & Charles I. Jones & John Van Reenen & Michael Webb, 2020. "Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(4), pages 1104-1144, April.
    8. Richard Freeman & John Van Reenen, 2009. "What If Congress Doubled R&D Spending on the Physical Sciences?," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 9, pages 1-38, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Benjamin F. Jones, 2009. "The Burden of Knowledge and the "Death of the Renaissance Man": Is Innovation Getting Harder?," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 283-317.
    10. Alex Bell & Raj Chetty & Xavier Jaravel & Neviana Petkova & John Van Reenen, 2019. "Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 134(2), pages 647-713.
    11. Azoulay, Pierre & Ding, Waverly & Stuart, Toby, 2007. "The determinants of faculty patenting behavior: Demographics or opportunities?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 599-623, August.
    12. Elias Einio & Josh Feng & Xavier Jaravel, 2022. "Social push and the direction of innovation," POID Working Papers 036, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    13. Orley Ashenfelter & David Card, 2002. "Did the Elimination of Mandatory Retirement Affect Faculty Retirement?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 957-980, September.
    14. Ganguli, Ina & Gaulé, Patrick & Čugalj, Danijela Vuletić, 2022. "Chasing the academic dream: Biased beliefs and scientific labor markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 202(C), pages 17-33.
    15. Celik, Murat Alp, 2023. "Does the Cream Always Rise to the Top? The Misallocation of Talent in Innovation," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 105-128.
    16. Charles I. Jones, 2002. "Sources of U.S. Economic Growth in a World of Ideas," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 220-239, March.
    17. Mikko Packalen & Jay Bhattacharya, 2019. "Age and the Trying Out of New Ideas," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(2), pages 341-373.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Smirnova, Inna & Shannon, Austin & Teplitskiy, Misha, 2025. "The effect of trainee career intentions on mentor's interest in the trainee: Experimental evidence from academia," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(5).
    2. Pezzoni, Michele & Sterzi, Valerio & Lissoni, Francesco, 2012. "Career progress in centralized academic systems: Social capital and institutions in France and Italy," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(4), pages 704-719.
    3. Rajeev K. Goel & Devrim Göktepe-Hultén, 2021. "Innovation by foreign researchers: relative influences of internal versus external human capital," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 258-276, February.
    4. Ding, Waverly & Choi, Emily, 2008. "Divergent Paths or Stepping Stones: A Comparison of Scientists’ Advising and Founding Activities," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt4907j25p, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.
    5. Munari, Federico & Toschi, Laura, 2021. "The impact of public funding on science valorisation: an analysis of the ERC Proof-of-Concept Programme," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(6).
    6. Edoardo Ferrucci & Francesco Lissoni & Ernest Miguelez, 2020. "Coming from afar and picking a man’s job:Women immigrant inventors in the United States," Working Papers hal-03098102, HAL.
    7. Henry Sauermann & Michael Roach, 2011. "Not All Scientists pay to be Scientists:," DRUID Working Papers 11-03, DRUID, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Industrial Economics and Strategy/Aalborg University, Department of Business Studies.
    8. Jacqueline N. Lane & Ina Ganguli & Patrick Gaule & Eva Guinan & Karim R. Lakhani, 2021. "Engineering serendipity: When does knowledge sharing lead to knowledge production?," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(6), pages 1215-1244, June.
    9. Stefan Krabel, 2012. "Scientists’ Valuation of Open Science and Commercialization: The Influence of Peers and Organizational Context," Chapters, in: Guido Buenstorf (ed.), Evolution, Organization and Economic Behavior, chapter 5, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Berger, Thor & Prawitz, Erik, 2024. "Inventors among the “Impoverished Sophisticate”," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 84(4), pages 1175-1207, December.
    11. Gold, E. Richard, 2021. "The fall of the innovation empire and its possible rise through open science," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(5).
    12. Pierre Azoulay & Waverly Ding & Toby Stuart, 2009. "The Impact Of Academic Patenting On The Rate, Quality And Direction Of (Public) Research Output," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 637-676, December.
    13. Bell, Alex & Chetty, Raj & Jaravel, Xavier & Petkova, Neviana & Van Reenen, John, 2019. "Do tax cuts produce more Einsteins? The impacts of financial incentives vs. exposure to innovation on the supply of inventors," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 121796, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    14. Lane, Julia I. & Owen-Smith, Jason & Rosen, Rebecca F. & Weinberg, Bruce A., 2015. "New linked data on research investments: Scientific workforce, productivity, and public value," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(9), pages 1659-1671.
    15. Forti, Enrico & Franzoni, Chiara & Sobrero, Maurizio, 2013. "Bridges or isolates? Investigating the social networks of academic inventors," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(8), pages 1378-1388.
    16. Sarah Kaplan & Keyvan Vakili, 2015. "The double-edged sword of recombination in breakthrough innovation," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(10), pages 1435-1457, October.
    17. Gaia Dossi & Marta Morando, 2025. "Polarized Technologies," CEP Discussion Papers dp2116, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    18. Ruchir Agarwal & Patrick Gaule, 2020. "Invisible Geniuses: Could the Knowledge Frontier Advance Faster?," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 2(4), pages 409-424, December.
    19. Kyle R. Myers & Wei Yang Tham & Jerry Thursby & Marie Thursby & Nina Cohodes & Karim Lakhani & Rachel Mural & Yilun Xu, 2023. "New Facts and Data about Professors and their Research," Papers 2312.01442, arXiv.org.
    20. Jerry Thursby & Marie Thursby, 2010. "University Licensing: Harnessing or Tarnishing Faculty Research?," NBER Chapters, in: Innovation Policy and the Economy, Volume 10, pages 159-189, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J26 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Retirement; Retirement Policies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16365. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.