Lahey, Joanna N. 2008. “Age, Women, and Hiring: An Experimental Study.” Journal of Human Resources 43(1): 30–56.
As baby boomers reach retirement age, demographic pressures on public programs may cause policy makers to cut benefits and encourage employment at later ages. But how much demand exists for older workers? This paper reports on a field experiment to determine hiring conditions for older women in entry-level jobs in two cities. A younger worker is more than 40 percent more likely to be offered an interview than is an older worker. No evidence is found to support taste-based discrimination as a reason for this differential, and some suggestive evidence is found to support statistical discrimination.
Joanna N. Lahey is an assistant professor of public policy at Texas A&M University. She thanks the MIT Shultz fund, NSF Doctoral Dissertation Grant # 238 7480, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, and National Institute on Aging NBER Grant # T32- AG00186 for funding and support. Special thanks also goes to Mike Baima, Lisa Bell, Faye Kasemset, Jennifer La’O, Dustin Rabideau, Vivian Si, Jessica A. Thompson, and Yelena Yakunina for excellent research assistance. The author thanks David Wilson for expertise on the St. Petersburg area and Barbara Peacock-Coady for information on older labor market entrants and reentrants. Thanks also go to Liz Oltmans Ananat, Josh Angrist, David Autor, M. Rose Barlow, Melissa A. Boyle, Norma Coe, Dora L. Costa, Mary Lee Cozad, Michael Greenstone, Chris Hansen, Todd Idson, Byron Lutz, Sendhil Mullainathan, Edmund Phelps, John Yinger, and members of the MIT public finance and labor lunches, the NASI annual conference, and the Boston College Center for Aging and Work seminar for insightful comments. The author claims any errors as her own. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning August 2008 through July 2011 from Joanna N. Lahey, 4220 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4220, jlahey@nber.org.