Mandatory retirement and faculty retirement decisions

As a result of the 1986 Age Discrimination in Employment Act, colleges and universities were no longer allowed to impose mandatory retirement on faculty members at age seventy after 1994. This paper estimates the change in retirement rates of faculty before and after the ending of mandatory retirement using data from the University of North Carolina (UNC) system. The analysis reveals a sharp decline in the probability of faculty at UNC retiring at age seventy once the university was unable to impose forced retirement.