Age discrimination at work

As noted by other authors in this volume, the workforce in most industrialised countries is becoming older and more age diverse (Eurostat 2013; Toossi 2012) largely due to people working longer for economic reasons (i.e., instead of retiring) and because of later retirement ages in many countries due to increased longevity (Vaupel 2010). Although this demographic change has a number of implications, in the context of the present chapter, it is important to note that people of different ages will be working side by side as never before. As a result, the possibility for workplace age discrimination is increasing. The good news is that age discrimination has been a topic for organisational psychologists for many years and has found increasing interest of late, and we have thus begun to accumulate a good theoretical and empirical basis for understanding the causes of workplace discrimination. In this chapter, we review the issues surrounding workplace age stereotyping and discrimination. We begin by differentiating age stereotyping from discrimination and by discussing which age groups are considered (e.g., who is “old”) when assessing age discrimination. Next, we examine the extant theoretical explanations for age stereotyping and discrimination, followed by the ways in which age discrimination can play out in the workplace and the empirical work on it. We follow with an examination of when age discrimination is likely to occur and then conclude with a discussion of developing areas of research in this active field.