With support from this grant, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Foundation will work to accelerate and advance research and applications to understand and solve workforce aging issues in the United States, with a particular emphasis on reaching human resource professionals. SHRM Foundation will pursue multiple strategies related to research, education, and production of materials. They will conduct a review of the relevant economic, legal, and social science literature on older workers and summarize those findings for a non-specialist audience; they will study human resource policy and practice trends related to older workers; and they will develop new tools and programs to incentivize the adoption of best human resource practices with regard to the aging workforce. Expected products include four studies, an Effective Practice Guidelines report, an Aging Workforce Strategies DVE, and executive roundtable event, a webinar series, and an online Resource Guide/Toolkit for HR practitioners.

This grant supports research by Robert Clark and Melinda Morrill of North Carolina State University that will study the labor market behavior of more than 875,000 public employees in North Carolina. Collaborating with the office of the North Carolina Treasurer, Clark and Morrill will investigate a series of four interrelated questions retirement in the public sector. One, how do older public employees prepare for this transition through saving for retirement? Two, how do older public employees determine their optimal retirement age from their career employer? Three, do those workers retiring from public employment move into complete retirement or extend their working life by seeking post-retirement work elsewhere? Four, how do individuals choose among annuity options within their defined benefit and defined contribution plans? The research plan involves analysis of administrative data, three employee and retirement surveys, and a field experiment that tests how information affects employees’ retirement savings behavior.

Audit/correspondence (AC) studies are the most frequently used research design for ascertaining the extent of age discrimination in hiring. This design involves submitting nearly identical resumes online to posted job openings. Resumes differ only by the age of the applicant. Discrimination is ascertained if younger applicants get more call-backs than do older ones. This methodology, however, appears likely to generate bias in favor of finding age discrimination. Because resumes give both younger and older applicants the same, low level of experience, the older applicant will appear to have “holes” in her work history that are likely to be viewed unfavorably. On the other hand, perceived (but unmeasured) differences in the human capital investment of older workers might lead employers to prefer older to younger applicants, biasing the result of audit studies in the opposite direction.This grant provides support for two field experiments by David Neumark of the University of California, Irvine aimed at increasing our understanding of the limitations of the audit/correspondence framework. The first will field an audit study where the resumes of older workers are not identical with their younger counterparts, but instead include work experience commensurate with their age. A finding that older workers are still less likely to be called for interviews may better match the legal standard for age discrimination. A second audit study will be fielded for both types of older applicants—those with equal low levels of experience like in past studies, and those with experience commensurate with age. Differential employer response to these resumes will capture differences in indicators of human capital among older workers.

This grant to The Brookings Institution funds the work of economists Gary Burtless and Bary Bosworth, who are investigating whether longer lifespans coupled with longer work lives and delayed retirement leads to greater income disparities among Americans aged 60 to 74. Burtless and Bosworth will estimate the effects of delayed retirement on the distribution of annual incomes among workers and retirees between 60 and 74; assess the effects of delayed retirement on inequality trends among individuals past age 75; estimate the effects of delayed retirement and lengthening life spans on the distribution of lifetime incomes; and offer conclusions about the public policy implications of the changing relationship among income, expected longevity, and retirement behavior.The income distribution issues cited above are particularly important as Congress considers reforms to the Social Security and Medicare systems in order to maintain their financial solvency. The tradeoff between restoring financial balance and avoiding adverse distributional effects is a key consideration in designing sensible reforms. The results from this research are essential to understanding possible adverse distributional effects.

In 1967, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) was passed by Congress with the intent to “promote employment of older persons based on their ability rather than age; to prohibit arbitrary age discrimination in employment.” While it has been viewed as successful in increasing employment rates for older workers, research suggests that older worker stereotypes and age discrimination still persist—or at least the perception of this discrimination still exists. Age-related charges of discrimination brought forward to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) have been on the increase. Whilst that may be the case, there has not been systematic examination of these charges.This grant funds work by a team led by Sarah Von Schrader of Cornell University that combines descriptive analyses with model-based approaches to better understand the phenomenon of perceived age-discrimination in the workplace. The study will look at a number of factors, including the characteristics of ADEA charges, charging parties, and employers receiving charges over time; individual and contextual factors associated with the outcomes of ADEA charges; and the characteristics of employers, along with local labor market factors, associated with ADEA charges. Von Schrader and her team will use restricted access data sets from the EEOC in conducting this research. By developing a better understanding of perceived discrimination in the workplace, it will be possible to better identify policies and practices to mitigate such discrimination.

This grant funds work by economic historian Claudia Goldin and labor economist Lawrence Katz to understand how education, employment, marriage, fertility, and health events from college to mid-life shape employment and retirement later in life among college-educated women. Goldin and Katz will study cohorts born from the mid-1930s to the early 1960s and that entered college from around 1950 to 1980. These cohorts, born up to 30 years apart, will provide sharp contrasts and differences in early, late, or no marriage; types of subjects majored in college; work patterns and whether they were intermittent or continuous; and if and when they had children. All of these factors contribute to how long college-educated women remain in the labor force and under what conditions. While existing research examines distinct cohorts of women, this will be the first study to link systematically the older, younger, and transitional cohorts.In addition to peer-reviewed articles and research papers, the project team will organize a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) conference and produce an NBER volume on women working longer.