Age discrimination at work

Abstract

This chapter focuses on empirical findings and directions for future research on age discrimination at work. A schalarly definition of age discrimination at work is offered, emphasizing the multi-faceted content of this socially embedded phenomenon consisting of positively and negatively biased cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes for workers across the age spectrum. A summary of findings on associations between age and said outcomes is provided. The essential contextual boundary conditions regulating this association are then identified to include cultural, institutional, job, and individual level factors. First, the role of cultural factors is identified based on theory and empirical inquiry to include collectivism (more vs. less emphasis on social groups} and tightness (more vs. less emphasis on social norms). Next, two institutional trends, including changes in the retirement age and flexible or protean careers, are identified as essential phenomena that may have implications for age discrimination at work and even the very definition of ""older workers"" itself. Then, theory and research surrounding the intertwined factors of job level and job age-type (the degree to which younger or older workers are perceived as particularly suitable for a given job) are clarified, suggesting that social perceptions of the ages of people who occupy a given job are essential to best understand associations between worker age and age discrimination at work. Finally, two related but distinct individual demographic factors are clarified to play essential moderating roles in said association, including subjective age (i.e., any conceptualization of age other than purely objective year of or years since birth) and the unique demographic subgroup membership of a given older or younger worker who is alternatively either male or female and from a higher or lower social class. These demographic factors are identified to create unique intersectional effects of age, interacting both among themselves and with the job context to result in radically different patterns of age discrimination for workers of differing demographic subtypes. A conceptual model and summary table of empirical findings and directions for future research based on the above-noted boundary conditions are provided to best help direct scholarly inquiry on age discrimination at work.