Burkhauser, Richard V., and Joseph F. Quinn. 1983. "Is Mandatory Retirement Overrated? Evidence from the 1970s." Journal of Human Resources 18(3):337-358.

In this paper we argue that mandatory retirement is only one aspect of a much broader system that influences an individual's retirement decision. We look at responses over time to variations in mandatory retirement rules faced by a sample of private-sector workers aged 62-64 in 1973. This is done within a model that specifically includes the economic incentives present in Social Security and pension systems. We find that the impact of a mandatory retirement rule on work is considerably smaller than a simple comparison of those with and without mandatory retirement would imply.

Burkhauser is a faculty member of the Department of Economics and the Institute for Public Policy Study, Vanderbilt University. Quinn is on the Department of Economics faculty at Boston College.
Research for this paper was principally funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, under a contract with the Urban Institute. The research was begun while both authors were at the Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and were supported by funds granted to the Institute by the Department of Health and Human Services pursuant to the provisions of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. The authors wish to thank Irene Powell as well as James Story, Gary Hendricks, Richard Wertheimer, and Sheila Zedlewski for their help in developing this paper and Ronald Ehrenberg and Jan Blakeslee for a critical first reading. We are also grateful to two referees for constructive comments on an earlier draft.

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