TY - JOUR AU - Neumark,David TI - Age Discrimination Legislation in the United States JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 8152 PY - 2001 Y2 - March 2001 DO - 10.3386/w8152 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8152 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8152.pdf N1 - Author contact info: David Neumark Department of Economics University of California, Irvine 3151 Social Science Plaza Irvine, CA 92697 Tel: 949-824-8496 Fax: 949/824-2182 E-Mail: dneumark@uci.edu AB - Legislation prohibiting age discrimination in the United States dates back to the decade of the 1960s, when along with the Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act barring discrimination against women and minorities, the U.S. Congress passed the 1967 Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Many critical issues regarding the rationale for or effectiveness of age discrimination legislation have been addressed, and continue to be studied, by researchers in both economics and law, while many questions remain. These questions are likely to become increasingly important as rapidly aging workforces in the United States and other industrialized countries threaten to vastly increase the social costs of any barriers to older workers' employment. This paper provides a summary, critical review, and synthesis of what we know about age discrimination legislation. It first traces out the legislative history and the evolving case law, and discusses implementation of the law. It then moves on to review the existing research on age discrimination legislation research that addresses the rationale for the legislation, evidence on its effectiveness, and criticisms of age discrimination legislation. ER -