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Peace officers in Texas' Teachers Retirement System (TRS) are not afforded early retirement age and a higher than standard annuity multiplier as are peace officers in Texas' Employee Retirement System (ERS) (2015). This means a TRS officer will work much longer and draw less in retirement income than ERS officers. Longer time in service and advanced age causes TRS officers' health to be adversely affected, and their policing abilities decline to a greater degree (Pascarella, 2006). ERS and TRS are both state funded. This causes a disparity in benefits between the two state funded retirement systems. These disparities place TRS officers in a second class status below their cohorts even though they perform the same duties. The issues of retirement age and annuity value hamper recruitment and retention in TRS police agencies. The Texas legislature must transition TRS officers to the existing peace officer retirement fund in ERS. TRS officers would then be allowed the same benefits as their ERS cohorts. This would positively affect the retirement income of TRS officers, and TRS agencies could retain productive and healthy officers. Critics claim the expense in transitioning TRS officers to the existing ERS fund would be too great. These costs would not come from state taxes, but from the TRS peace officer themselves. This additional percentage of the officer's pre-tax salary would go toward supporting the fund. This would eliminate the need for a state tax increase, and it would still allow TRS officers a retirement system at parity with ERS officers.

Issues associated with retirement in general, and phased transitions into retirement in particular, are taking on increased importance for a variety of reasons. Outlines those reasons, paying particular attention to the practice of mandatory retirement. Presents age dependency ratios for the OECD to highlight the importance of these issues in the context of an ageing and longer‐lived workforce relative to a smaller working age population. Then discusses the prevalence of mandatory retirement in Canada and the USA, and presents empirical evidence from Canada on variables associated with retiring because of mandatory retirement. The Canadian case is of particular interest, because mandatory retirement in Canada has generally not been banned, which is in marked contrast with the situation in the USA, where it has been banned as constituting age discrimination. The public and legal debate over the issue of mandatory retirement has also been extensive in Canada, and this debate may provide information for other countries dealing with the issue. Ends with an assessment of the extent to which mandatory retirement exerts a constraining influence on transitions into retirement. The essential argument is that its constraining impact is not as simple as it may initially appear. To the extent that mandatory retirement is an intricate part of the compensation and human resource function of firms, banning it can have important implications for those functions and, in turn, for transitions into retirement. The complexities of these issues and dramatically increasing old‐age dependency ratios will ensure that this is an area of growing importance for public policy and human resource management.

If married women's movement into the workforce was the labor market story of the 20th century, the aging workforce and growing retired force will be the story of the early 21st. But everything we think we know about retirement is wrong. Indeed, one thing I know is that retirement as we know it is unraveling.