Working Paper: NBER ID: w21669
Authors: David Neumark; Ian Burn; Patrick Button
Abstract: We design and implement a large-scale field experiment – a resume correspondence study – to address a number of potential limitations of existing field experiments testing for age discrimination, which may bias their results. One limitation that may bias these studies towards finding discrimination is the practice of giving older and younger applicants similar experience in the job to which they are applying, making them “otherwise comparable.” The second limitation arises because greater unobserved differences in human capital investment of older applicants may bias existing field experiments against finding age discrimination. We also study ages closer to retirement than in past studies, and use a richer set of job profiles for older workers to test for differences associated with transitions to less demanding jobs (“bridge jobs”) at older ages. Based on evidence from over 40,000 job applications, we find robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women, especially those near retirement age. But we find that there is considerably less evidence of age discrimination against men after correcting for the potential biases this study addresses.
Keywords: age discrimination; labor market; field experiment; older workers; employment
JEL Codes: J14; J26; J7; K31
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Older women (J14) | Lower callback rate (J29) |
| Older applicants (J14) | Underestimation of discrimination (J79) |
| Age discrimination (J71) | Hiring outcomes (M51) |
| Gender moderation (J16) | Age discrimination (J71) |
| Age (J14) | Callback rate (E52) |