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Late retirement, early careers, and the aging of U.S. science and engineering professors.

ABSTRACT: Studies of rescuing early-career scientists often take narrow approaches and focus on PhD students or postdoc populations. In a multi-method systems approach, we examine the inter-relations between the two ends of the pipeline and ask: what are the effects of late retirement on aging and hiring in academia? With a simulation model, we postulate that the decline in the retirement rate in academia contributes to the aging pattern through two mechanisms: (a) direct effect: longer stay of established professors, and (b) indirect effect: a hiring decline in tenure-track positions. Late retirement explains more than half of the growth in average age and brings about 20% decline in hiring. We provide empirical evidence based on the natural experimental set-up of the removal of mandatory retirement in the 1990s.

SUBMITTER: Ghaffarzadegan N

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6306255 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Late retirement, early careers, and the aging of U.S. science and engineering professors.

Ghaffarzadegan Navid N Xu Ran R

PloS one 20181226 12

Studies of rescuing early-career scientists often take narrow approaches and focus on PhD students or postdoc populations. In a multi-method systems approach, we examine the inter-relations between the two ends of the pipeline and ask: what are the effects of late retirement on aging and hiring in academia? With a simulation model, we postulate that the decline in the retirement rate in academia contributes to the aging pattern through two mechanisms: (a) direct effect: longer stay of establishe ...[more]

PMID: 30586402

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