The Fact
In experimental work on ageist language in job advertisements, Burn, Button, Munguia Corella, and Neumark found that the discouragement effect of age-stereotyped wording on older applicants was quantitatively important—comparable in magnitude to the hiring discrimination measured in related résumé correspondence experiments.
What This Means
The labor-market penalty can happen at two gates: whether an older person applies at all and what happens after the application arrives. A job ad can shrink the older applicant pool before formal screening begins.
Sources
- Burn, Ian, Patrick Button, Luis Munguia Corella, and David Neumark. “Does Ageist Language in Job Ads Predict Age Discrimination in Hiring?” Journal of Labor Economics 40, no. 3 (2022): 613–667. https://doi.org/10.1086/717730