Public Servants’ Response to the Terms and Conditions of Retirement in Uganda

Abstract

Upon joining a firm, employees often find terms and conditions of retirement. They work for a wage, proportion of which is deferred into the future as retirement benefits; only accessed after some regulations have been fufilled. This paper uses a descriptive strategy to examine how employees in the public service in Uganda respond to the retirement conditions (mandatory age of exit, and minimum years of service), while measuring response to retirement conditions in binary form (voluntary early retirement, and retirement at age 60). Using data on retirees from the Pension Department of the Ministry of Public Service, results show that majority public servants in Uganda positively respond to the retirement rules. Majority retire at the statutory mandatory age. Moreso, the female employees, teachers, those not married, and those in upper salary scale. Also, there is an observed sharp strike in retirement at10 on the bar chart, after clocking the minimum years of service, a pointer to the early retirement condition. Such a response, particularly, by the different socioeconomic states of retirees, has implications on labor supply policies in the country.