IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp3029.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Experimental Investigation of Age Discrimination in the English Labor Market

Author

Listed:
  • Riach, Peter A.

    (Independent Researcher)

  • Rich, Judy

    (University of Portsmouth)

Abstract

Carefully-matched pairs of written job applications were made to test for age discrimination in hiring. A twenty-one year-old and a thirty-nine year-old woman applied for jobs where a “new graduate” was sought; men aged twenty-seven and forty-seven, inquired about employment as waiters; women aged twenty-seven and forty-seven, inquired about employment in retail sales. The rate of net discrimination against the older graduate, and against the older waiters in their London inquiries, correspond to the highest rates ever recorded anywhere, by written tests, for racial discrimination. There was a statistically significant preference for the older applicant in retail sales.

Suggested Citation

  • Riach, Peter A. & Rich, Judy, 2007. "An Experimental Investigation of Age Discrimination in the English Labor Market," IZA Discussion Papers 3029, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3029
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp3029.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. P. A. Riach & J. Rich, 2002. "Field Experiments of Discrimination in the Market Place," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(483), pages 480-518, November.
    2. Oaxaca, Ronald, 1973. "Male-Female Wage Differentials in Urban Labor Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 14(3), pages 693-709, October.
    3. Alan S. Blinder, 1973. "Wage Discrimination: Reduced Form and Structural Estimates," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 8(4), pages 436-455.
    4. Peter A. Riach & Judith Rich, 2004. "Deceptive Field Experiments of Discrimination: Are they Ethical?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(3), pages 457-470, August.
    5. Riach, Peter A & Rich, Judith, 1987. "Testing for Sexual Discrimination in the Labour Market," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(49), pages 165-178, December.
    6. Adams, Scott J., 2004. "Age discrimination legislation and the employment of older workers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 219-241, April.
    7. Peter Riach & Judith Rich, 2004. "Fishing for Discrimination," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 62(4), pages 465-486.
    8. Becker, Gary S., 1971. "The Economics of Discrimination," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 2, number 9780226041162, September.
    9. Gunderson, Morley, 1989. "Male-Female Wage Differentials and Policy Responses," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 27(1), pages 46-72, March.
    10. Phelps, Edmund S, 1972. "The Statistical Theory of Racism and Sexism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(4), pages 659-661, September.
    11. William A. Darity & Patrick L. Mason, 1998. "Evidence on Discrimination in Employment: Codes of Color, Codes of Gender," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 63-90, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carlsson, Magnus & Fumarco, Luca & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2013. "Artifactual Evidence of Discrimination in Correspondence Studies? A Replication of the Neumark Method," IZA Discussion Papers 7619, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Roland G. Fryer, Jr. & Devah Pager & Jörg L. Spenkuch, 2013. "Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(3), pages 633-689.
    3. Nickolas Gagnon & Kristof Bosmans & Arno Riedl, 2020. "The Effect of Unfair Chances and Gender Discrimination on Labor Supply," CESifo Working Paper Series 8058, CESifo.
    4. Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, 2015. "Crossing Boundaries, Displacing Previous Knowledge and Claiming Superiority: Is the Economics of Discrimination a Conquest of Economics Imperialism?," STOREPapers 5_2015, Associazione Italiana per la Storia dell'Economia Politica - StorEP.
    5. Chen, Yiu Por (Vincent) & Zhang, Yuan, 2018. "A decomposition method on employment and wage discrimination and its application in urban China (2002–2013)," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 1-12.
    6. Riach, Peter A. & Rich, Judy, 2007. "An Experimental Investigation of Age Discrimination in the Spanish Labour Market," IZA Discussion Papers 2654, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Singhari, Smrutirekha & Madheswaran, S., 2016. "Social exclusion and caste discrimination in public and private sectors in India: A decomposition analysis," Working Papers 361, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    8. Jacquemet, Nicolas & Yannelis, Constantine, 2012. "Indiscriminate discrimination: A correspondence test for ethnic homophily in the Chicago labor market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 824-832.
    9. S. Madheswaran & Smrutirekha Singhari, 2016. "Social exclusion and caste discrimination in public and private sectors in India: A decomposition analysis," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 59(2), pages 175-201, June.
    10. Thomas Haan & Theo Offerman & Randolph Sloof, 2017. "Discrimination in the Labour Market: The Curse of Competition between Workers," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(603), pages 1433-1466, August.
    11. Galvis-Aponte, Luis Armando, 2011. "Diferenciales salariales por género y región en Colombia : una aproximación con regresión por cuantiles," Chapters, in: Bonilla-Mejía, Leonardo (ed.), Dimensión regional de las desigualdades en Colombia, chapter 6, pages 209-252, Banco de la Republica de Colombia.
    12. Azmat, Ghazala & Petrongolo, Barbara, 2014. "Gender and the labor market: What have we learned from field and lab experiments?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 32-40.
    13. Ravi Srivastava, 2019. "Emerging Dynamics of Labour Market Inequality in India: Migration, Informality, Segmentation and Social Discrimination," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 62(2), pages 147-171, June.
    14. Ram Mainali & Saqib Jafarey & Gabriel Montes-Rojas, 2017. "Earnings and Caste: An Evaluation of Caste Wage Differentials in the Nepalese Labour Market," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(3), pages 396-421, March.
    15. Daviti Jibuti, 2018. "Discrimination against Workers with Visible Tattoos: Experimental Evidence from Germany," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp628, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    16. Dueñas, Diego & Iglesias, Carlos & Llorente, Raquel, 2016. "¿Por qué las mujeres no se distribuyen de forma homogénea en el mercado de trabajo español? El “efecto rechazo” y el “efecto atracción”," El Trimestre Económico, Fondo de Cultura Económica, vol. 0(330), pages .339-369, abril-jun.
    17. Gabin Langevin & David Masclet & Fabien Moizeau & Emmanuel Peterlé, 2013. "Educational Attainment, Wages and Employment of Second-Generation Immigrants in France," CIRANO Working Papers 2013s-33, CIRANO.
    18. Robert Fairlie & Alicia Robb & David T. Robinson, 2022. "Black and White: Access to Capital Among Minority-Owned Start-ups," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 2377-2400, April.
    19. Tushar Agrawal, 2014. "Gender and caste-based wage discrimination in India: some recent evidence [Geschlecht und Kaste-ansässige Lohndiskriminierung in Indien: Einige Neue Beweise]," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 47(4), pages 329-340, December.
    20. Hugo Nopo & Jaime Saavedra & Maximo Torero, 2004. "Ethnicity and Earnings in Urban Peru," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0405, Middlebury College, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    discrimination; employment; hiring; age; field experiment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3029. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.