UM16-04: Do State Age Discrimination Protections Reduce Hiring Discrimination Against Older Workers?
Researchers
Abstract
State age discrimination protections stronger than the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act may help older workers extend their work lives. This project builds on a large-scale resume correspondence study that is already designed and in the field, which provides direct measures of discrimination in hiring. The project will significantly expand the study’s scope from 12 cities to all or most states, and then study the relationships between direct measures of age discrimination in hiring across states and state age discrimination protections, focusing on discrimination against job applicants at or above the age of eligibility for early Social Security benefits (age 62). The hypothesis is that in states with stronger protection there will be less discrimination in hiring, which would imply that federal adoption of the stronger age discrimination protections used in some states could boost employment of workers who might otherwise claim Social Security benefits early and stop working.
Publications
- Do State Laws Protecting Older Workers from Discrimination Reduce Age Discrimination in Hiring? Experimental (and Nonexperimental) Evidence (Working Paper)
- Do State Laws Protecting Older Workers from Discrimination Reduce Age Discrimination in Hiring? Experimental (and Nonexperimental) Evidence (Research Brief)
- Do State Laws Protecting Older Workers from Discrimination Laws Reduce Age Discrimination in Hiring? Experimental (and Nonexperimental) Evidence (Working Paper)