Age, Women, and Hiring: An Experimental Study

Joanna Lahey

Working Papers, Center for Retirement Research at Boston College from Center for Retirement Research

Abstract: As the baby boom cohort reaches retirement age, demographic pressures on public programs such as Social Security may cause policy makers to cut benefits and encourage employment at later ages. This prospect raises the question of how much employer demand exists for older workers. This paper reports on a labor market experiment to determine the hiring conditions for older women in entry-level jobs in Boston, MA and St. Petersburg, FL. Differential interviewing by age is found for these jobs. 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.

Keywords: baby boomers; older workers; women; hiring; entry-level jobs; discrimination; taste-based; statistical (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2006-11, Revised 2006-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-exp and nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Age, Women, and Hiring: An Experimental Study (2008)
Working Paper: Age, Women, and Hiring: An Experimental Study (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crr:crrwps:wp2006-23

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