lnu.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
The effect of age and gender on labor demand: evidence from a field experiment
Linnaeus University, School of Business and Economics, Department of Economics and Statistics. (Linnaeus University Centre for Discrimination and Integration Studies)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-5620-4745
Uppsala University, Sweden.
2017 (English)Report (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

In most countries, there are systematic age and gender differences in labor market outcomes. Older workers and women often have lower employment rates, and the duration of unemployment increases with age. These patterns may reflect age and gender differences in either labor demand (i.e. discrimination) or labor supply. In this study, we investigate the importance of demand effects by analyzing whether employers use information about a job applicant’s age and gender in their hiring decisions. To do this, we conducted a field experiment, where over 6,000 fictitious resumes with randomly assigned information about age (in the interval 35-70) and gender were sent to employers with a vacancy and the employers’ responses (callbacks) were recorded. We find that the callback rate starts to fall substantially early in the age interval we consider. This decline is steeper for women than for men. The negative age effect prevails in all seven occupations we include. These results indicate that age discrimination is a widespread phenomenon affecting workers already in their early 40s. Ageism and occupational skill loss due to aging are unlikely explanations of these effects. Instead, our employer survey suggests that employer stereotypes about other worker characteristics – ability to learn new tasks, flexibility/adaptability, and ambition – are important. We find no evidence of gender discrimination against women on average, but the gender effect is heterogeneous across occupations and firms. Women have a higher callback rate in female-dominated occupations and firms, and when the recruiter is a woman. These results suggest that an in-group bias affects hiring patterns, which may reinforce the existing gender segregation in the labor market.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Linnéuniversitetet , 2017. , p. 34
Series
Working paper series: Linnaeus University Centre for Discrimination and Integration Studies ; 2017:4
Keywords [en]
Age, Gender, Discrimination, Field experiment, Labor market
National Category
Economics
Research subject
Economy, Economics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-70087OAI: oai:DiVA.org:lnu-70087DiVA, id: diva2:1176917
Available from: 2018-01-23 Created: 2018-01-23 Last updated: 2019-08-07Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

fulltext(849 kB)1437 downloads
File information
File name FULLTEXT01.pdfFile size 849 kBChecksum SHA-512
fe4090ca88cc301b03681b07cb49e62a8317d8471e3e67b32b7c71cd3de0e9436f25041a3762762c4e02f0f7ff823b7a474aa003d1d08c5438014662179101c6
Type fulltextMimetype application/pdf

Authority records

Carlsson, Magnus

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Carlsson, Magnus
By organisation
Department of Economics and Statistics
Economics

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar
Total: 1437 downloads
The number of downloads is the sum of all downloads of full texts. It may include eg previous versions that are now no longer available

urn-nbn

Altmetric score

urn-nbn
Total: 818 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf