Economics Of Discrimination

In this paper, we examine how business cycles affect labor market outcomes in the United States. We conduct a detailed analysis of how cycles affect outcomes differentially across persons of differing age, education, race, and gender, and we compare the cyclical sensitivity during the Great Recession to that in the early 1980s recession. We present raw tabulations and estimate a state panel data model that leverages variation across U.S. states in the timing and severity of business cycles. We find that the impacts of the Great Recession are not uniform across demographic groups and have been felt most strongly for men, black and Hispanic workers, youth, and low-education workers. These dramatic differences in the cyclicality across demographic groups are remarkably stable across three decades of time and throughout recessionary periods and expansionary periods. For the 2007 recession, these differences are largely explained by differences in exposure to cycles across industry-occupation employment.

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Who Suffers during Recessions

The goal of this piece is to survey the developing and rapidly growing literature on the economic consequences of COVID-19 and the governmental responses, and to synthetize the insights emerging from a very large number of studies. This survey: (i) provides an overview of the data sets and the techniques employed to measure social distancing and COVID-19 cases and deaths; (ii) reviews the literature on the determinants of compliance with and the effectiveness of social distancing; (iii) mentions the macroeconomic and financial impacts including the modelling of plausible mechanisms; (iv) summarizes the literature on the socioeconomic consequences of COVID-19, focusing on those aspects related to labor, health, gender, discrimination, and the environment; and (v) summarizes the literature on public policy responses.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/222316/1/GLO-DP-0601.pdf

A literature review of the economics of COVID-19

Throughout life, women’s sexuality is more dependent on the existence and nature of a relationship with a partner than is that of men. The evidence that this is the case in adolescence, early adulthood, and middle and old age will be discussed in relation to these life stages. It may explain or result from the greater importance psychological (as opposed to biological) factors have on women’s sexuality as compared to men’s. Despite the overwhelming importance given in the United States to environmental as compared to biological variables in determining human behavior (McConaghy, 1987b), some of its theorists have considered the differences between the behavior of men and women to be genetically determined by the form of sexual activity selected in the evolution of human beings to enable the survival of their species (Knoth, Boyd, & Singer, 1988).

Age and Sex

Objective Although there is anecdotal evidence of ageism occurring at both the structural level (in which societal institutions reinforce systematic bias against older persons) and individual level (in which older persons take in the negative views of aging of their culture), previous systematic reviews have not examined how both levels simultaneously influence health. Thus, the impact of ageism may be underestimated. We hypothesized that a comprehensive systematic review would reveal that these ageism levels adversely impact the health of older persons across geography, health outcomes, and time. Method A literature search was performed using 14 databases with no restrictions on region, language, and publication type. The systematic search yielded 13,691 papers for screening, 638 for full review, and 422 studies for analyses. Sensitivity analyses that adjusted for sample size and study quality were conducted using standardized tools. The study protocol is registered (PROSPERO CRD42018090857). Results Ageism led to significantly worse health outcomes in 95.5% of the studies and 74.0% of the 1,159 ageism-health associations examined. The studies reported ageism effects in all 45 countries, 11 health domains, and 25 years studied, with the prevalence of significant findings increasing over time (p < .0001). A greater prevalence of significant ageism-health findings was found in less-developed countries than more-developed countries (p = .0002). Older persons who were less educated were particularly likely to experience adverse health effects of ageism. Evidence of ageism was found across the age, sex, and race/ethnicity of the targeters (i.e., persons perpetrating ageism). Conclusion The current analysis which included over 7 million participants is the most comprehensive review of health consequences of ageism to date. Considering that the analysis revealed that the detrimental impact of ageism on older persons’ health has been occurring simultaneously at the structural and individual level in five continents, our systematic review demonstrates the pernicious reach of ageism.

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Global reach of ageism on older persons' health: A systematic review.

We design and implement a large-scale resume correspondence study to address limitations of existing field experiments testing for age discrimination that may bias their results. One limitation tha...

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Is It Harder for Older Workers to Find Jobs? New and Improved Evidence from a Field Experiment

We design and implement a large-scale field experiment on age discrimination to address limitations of past research that may bias their results. One limitation is the practice of giving older and younger applicants similar experience in the job to which they are applying, to make them "otherwise comparable." The second limitation is ignoring the likelihood of greater variation in unobserved differences among older workers owing to human capital investment. Based on evidence from over 40,000 job applications, we find robust evidence of age discrimination in hiring against older women, but considerably less evidence of age discrimination against older men.

Experimental Age Discrimination Evidence and the Heckman Critique

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the policies to curb its spread brought parts of the U.S. economy to a virtual halt in March 2020. Payroll jobs declined by 0.7 million in March 2020 and 20.5 million in April 2020, pushing the seasonally adjusted official unemployment rate (U-3) to a peak of 14.7% in April 2020 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020a, 2020b). This rate far surpasses the peak rates during the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 (10.6%, January 2010) and the early 1980s recession (11.4%, January 1983; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020c), and yet the unemployment rate during COVID-19 has likely been underestimated (Montenovo et al., 2020). Analyses of how the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting recession impact older workers has been limited. In this report, we discuss how older workers fared in prior recessions in the United States, estimate some early effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and recession on employment and unemployment rates by age group and sex, discuss how COVID-19 and this recession differ from prior recessions, and conclude with a brief discussion of important topics for future research.

Early Evidence on the Impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the Recession on Older Workers

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Did Age Discrimination Protections Help Older Workers Weather the Great Recession?: Age Discrimination Protections

We examine whether stronger age discrimination laws at the state level moderated the impact of the Great Recession on older workers. We use a difference-in-difference-in-differences strategy to compare older workers in states with stronger and weaker laws, to their younger counterparts, both before, during, and after the Great Recession. We find very little evidence that stronger age discrimination protections helped older workers weather the Great Recession, relative to younger workers. The evidence sometimes points in the opposite direction, with stronger state age discrimination protections associated with more adverse effects of the Great Recession on older workers. We suggest that this may be because during an experience like the Great Recession, severe labor market disruptions make it difficult to discern discrimination, weakening the effects of stronger state age discrimination protections, or because higher termination costs associated with stronger age discrimination protections do more to deter hiring when future product and labor demand is highly uncertain.

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Patrick Button

Papers

Is It Harder for Older Workers to Find Jobs? New and Improved Evidence from a Field Experiment

Experimental Age Discrimination Evidence and the Heckman Critique

Early Evidence on the Impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the Recession on Older Workers

Did Age Discrimination Protections Help Older Workers Weather the Great Recession?: Age Discrimination Protections

Did Age Discrimination Protections Help Older Workers Weather the Great Recession