Older Workers Need Not Apply? Ageist Language in Job Ads and Age Discrimination in Hiring

55 Pages Posted: 16 Dec 2019 Last revised: 19 Jan 2025

See all articles by Ian Burn

Ian Burn

Stockholm University - Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI)

Patrick Button

Tulane University, Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Luis Felipe Munguia Corella

Comisión Nacional de los Salarios Mínimos

David Neumark

University of California, Irvine - Department of Economics; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Date Written: December 2019

Abstract

We study the relationships between ageist stereotypes – as reflected in the language used in job ads – and age discrimination in hiring, exploiting the text of job ads and differences in callbacks to older and younger job applicants from a resume (correspondence study) field experiment (Neumark, Burn, and Button, 2019). Our analysis uses methods from computational linguistics and machine learning to directly identify, in a field-experiment setting, ageist stereotypes that underlie age discrimination in hiring. The methods we develop provide a framework for applied researchers analyzing textual data, highlighting the usefulness of various computer science techniques for empirical economics research. We find evidence that language related to stereotypes of older workers sometimes predicts discrimination against older workers. For men, our evidence points to age stereotypes about all three categories we consider – health, personality, and skill – predicting age discrimination, and for women, age stereotypes about personality. In general, the evidence is much stronger for men, and our results for men are quite consistent with the industrial psychology literature on age stereotypes.

Suggested Citation

Burn, Ian and Button, Patrick and Munguia Corella, Luis Felipe and Neumark, David, Older Workers Need Not Apply? Ageist Language in Job Ads and Age Discrimination in Hiring (December 2019). NBER Working Paper No. w26552, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3504437

Ian Burn (Contact Author)

Stockholm University - Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI) ( email )

Kyrkgatan 43B
SE-106 91 Stockholm
Sweden

HOME PAGE: http://ianburn.com

Patrick Button

Tulane University, Department of Economics ( email )

New Orleans, LA 70118
United States

HOME PAGE: http://www.patrickbutton.com

National Bureau of Economic Research ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

IZA Institute of Labor Economics ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Luis Felipe Munguia Corella

Comisión Nacional de los Salarios Mínimos ( email )

Ave. Cuauhtémoc 14
Col. Doctores
Ciudad de México, Ciudad de México 06720
Mexico

David Neumark

University of California, Irvine - Department of Economics ( email )

3151 Social Science Plaza
Irvine, CA 92697-5100
United States
949-824-8496 (Phone)
949-824-2182 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~dneumark/

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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