Age, Women, and Hiring: An Experimental Study

Joanna Lahey

No 11435, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

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 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% more likely to be offered an interview than 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.

JEL-codes: J1 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-06
Note: LS AG
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Published as Lahey, Joanna N. "Age, Women, and Hiring: An Experimental Study." Journal of Human Resources 43, 1 (Winter 2008): 30-56.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11435.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Age, Women, and Hiring: An Experimental Study (2008)
Working Paper: Age, Women, and Hiring: An Experimental Study (2006)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:11435

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w11435

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).