Retirement policies for the 21st century

As we rapidly approach the 21st century, current human resource management policies emphasizing early retirement may prove shortsighted. Changing demographics and projected labor shortages in certain critical occupations may require a reversal of present early retirement policies. This article reports the views of a national sample of 897 executives on work and retirement. We report their reactions to pressures for early retirement, their responses to proposed incentives to delay retirmeent, and finally, their planned post retirement activities. Their responses have important implications for revising human resource policies in the years ahead.     

Federal deductibility and local property tax rates

Recent econometric work has suggested that federal deductibility of state and local taxes has raised the proportion of these taxes—especially property taxes—in local budgets. This paper lends additional support to these earlier findings by showing that one channel through which deductibility leads to higher local property tax revenues is by increasing the rate of local property taxation. Specifically, we find that if deductibility were eliminated, the mean property tax rate in our sample would fall by 0.00715 ($7.15 per $1000 of assessed property), or 21.1% of the mean tax rate.     

Retirement policies: Evidence of the need for change

Although flexible retirement is widely advocated in the professional literature, a recent survey indicates little movement toward flexibility at the operating level. Human resource managers perceive limited top management support for flexibility. Educational and research efforts are needed to improve retirement policies and more effectively utilize an aging work force.