Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: Age Discrimination, an Audit Study

劳动力市场歧视是美国一个主要的社会问题，但其原因尚不清楚。这项研究使用简历审计方法探讨了劳动力市场对年龄在45岁到65岁之间的非熟练女性的歧视。匹配的简历，除了年龄外，在所有方面都相同，将被发送到具有入门级职位空缺的公司。年龄以高中毕业日期为标志，简历上只列出最近10年的工作经验。如果存在歧视，年龄和面谈请求率之间应该存在负相关关系。简历审计将在波士顿和坦帕/圣彼得堡地区进行。还将通过不同的简历特点来探讨歧视的其他原因。社会学家和心理学家使用简历审计来研究劳动力市场歧视，但这些研究缺乏双重盲属性。虽然经济学家已经使用配对简历审计方法来研究住房和劳动力市场的歧视，但只有一套审计研究是为了探索劳动力市场的年龄歧视。这项研究提供了关于劳动力市场上对老年妇女的年龄歧视程度以及这些潜在工人补充其社会保障收入的能力的良好控制的证据。这项研究的结果将增加我们目前的知识，因为它能够区分招聘中年龄歧视的不同原因。最后，由于它比较了四个不同的年龄，而不仅仅是两个，这项研究增加了年龄歧视中使用的审计方法的力量。尽管劳动力中的老年女性比老年男性更多，但几乎没有关于劳动力市场歧视老年女性的研究。经济学文献一般假设，劳动力不参与是老年女性的一种选择，只有供给侧因素与政策讨论(如改变社会保障福利)相关。鉴于女性比男性长寿，这在文学和政策讨论中是一个严重的疏漏。通过探索老年妇女劳动力市场的需求方面，这项研究将把老年妇女劳动力市场的需求方面纳入关于老年人，特别是老年妇女的政策讨论。

Labor market discrimination is a major social concern in the US, yet its causes are not well understood. This research explores labor market discrimination against unskilled women between the ages of 45 and 65 using a resume audit approach. Matched resumes, identical in all respects except age, will be sent to companies with entry-level job openings. Age is signaled by date of high school graduation and only the most recent 10 years of work experience will be listed on the resume. If discrimination exists, there should be a negative relationship between age and interview request rates. The resume audit will be conducted in the Boston and Tampa/St Petersburg areas. Other reasons for discrimination will also be explored through varying resume characteristics. OLS and logit regressions will be used to analyze the data.Sociologists and psychologists have used the resume audits to study labor market discrimination but these studies lack the double blind attribute. While economists have used the matched pair resume audit method to study housing and labor market discrimination, only one set of audit studies has been done to explore age discrimination in the labor market. This research presents well-controlled evidence on the extent of age-discrimination against older women in the labor market and the ability of these potential workers to supplement their social security income. The result of this research will add to our current knowledge through its ability to discriminate between different reasons for age discrimination in hiring. Finally, since it compares four different ages rather than just two, this study adds power to the audit methodology as used in age discrimination. Although there are more older women in the labor force than older men, there are been virtually no studies of labor market discrimination against older women. The economics literature generally assumes that labor force non-participation is a choice for older women and that only supply-side factors are relevant for policy discussions (such as changing social security benefits). Given that women live longer than men, this is a serious omission in the literature and policy discussions. By exploring the demand-side aspects of labor market for older women, this study will bring the demand-side of the labor market for older women into policy discussions about older people generally and older women in particular.