Joanna N. Lahey

Becoming Oldest-Old: Evidence from Historical U.S. Data

We argue that the environment determines life span, using historical data to show that such indicators of environmental insults in early childhood and young adulthood as quarter of birth, residence, occupation, wealth, and the incidence of specific infectious diseases affected older age mortality. Consistent with improvements in early life factors, we find that the effect of quarter of birth on older age mortality has diminished over the twentieth century and that the declining impact of quarter of birth explains 16 to 17 percent of the difference in ten year mortality rates of Americans age 60-79 in 1900 and in 1960-1980. We estimate that at least one-fifth of the increase between 1900 and 1999 in the probability of a 65 year old surviving to age 85 may be attributable to early life conditions. We also present suggestive evidence on the mortality trajectory of the oldest old in the first half of the twentieth century that implies that the shape of the mortality trajectory, though not its level, has remained constant.

International Comparison of Age Discrimination Laws

European age discrimination legislation is discussed in the context of the U.S. Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and related state laws. U.S. law was originally introduced to protect productive older workers from age stereotypes, but more recently preventing age discrimination has become important as a means of keeping costs down on entitlement programs as the population ages. Changes in enforcement, penalties, exemptions, length of time to file, and burden of proof have changed the effects of the laws over time. The ADEA has had both positive effects on currently employed older workers and negative effects on the hiring of older workers. Enforcement and publicity are offered as possible explanations for the strength of these positive and negative effects. Age discrimination legislation in Europe, indicated in the Framework Directive 2000/78, is driven by economic and political considerations. European legislation calls for less enforcement and more exemptions than the corresponding U.S. cases that could lead to smaller effects on employment. However, pensions, disability, unemployment, and social security potentially have a stronger effect on social norms for retirement age than does anti-discrimination legislation.

Small Victories: Creating Intrinsic Motivation in Task Completion and Debt Repayment

Tasks such as the elimination of all debts when faced with the immediate option to spend can be unpleasant but not conceptually difficult. Dividing these tasks into smaller parts and completing the parts from smallest size to largest size can help people realize quick motivational gains that increase their likelihood of completing the task. The authors more broadly define this idea as “small victories” and discuss, model, and empirically examine two related behavioral theories that might explain it. A laboratory experiment tests this prediction and provides data for model calibration. Consistent with the idea of small victories, when a task is broken down into parts of unequal size, participants perform faster when the parts are arranged in ascending order (i.e., from smallest to largest) rather than descending order (i.e., from largest to smallest). The calibrated model is consistent with the directional predictions of each theory. However, when participants are given choice over orderings, they choose the ascending ordering least often. The authors conclude with a discussion of the efficacy of this method in stylized debt-repayment scenarios.

The Resume Characteristics Determining Job Interviews for Middle-Aged Women Seeking Entry-Level Employment

Obtaining an entry-level job can be critically important for women with little education, particularly those who have taken time out of the labor force. This article uses archival data from a field experiment, called a resume audit study, to examine the characteristics of entry-level resumes that are important to potential employers. In accordance with earlier theory, post–high school education and training, such as from a community college or a computer training program, are primary factors in determining whether a woman receives an interview. For example, vocational training more than doubles the chance of an interview. Other factors are not as important for entry-level jobs, unlike what resume manuals aimed at college graduates suggest.

The Effect of Anti-Abortion Legislation on Nineteenth Century Fertility

Using nineteenth century legal information combined with census information, I examine the effect of state laws that restricted American women’s access to abortion on the ratio of children to women. I estimate an increase in the birthrate of 4 % to 12 % when abortion is restricted. In the absence of anti-abortion laws, fertility would have been 5 % to 12 % lower in the early twentieth century.

Technical Aspects of Correspondence Studies

This chapter discusses technical concerns and choices that arise when crafting a correspondence or audit study using external validity as a motivating framework. The chapter discusses resume creation, including power analysis , choice of inputs, pros and cons of matching pairs, solutions to the limited template problem, and ensuring that instruments indicate what the experimenters want them to indicate. Further topics about implementation include when and for how long to field a study, deciding on a participant pool, and whether or not to use replacement from the participant pool . More technical topics include matching outcomes to inputs, data storage, and analysis issues such as when to use clustering, when not to use fixed effects, and how to measure heterogeneous and interactive effects. The chapter ends with a technical checklist that experimenters can utilize prior to fielding a correspondence study.

Dual-Eligible Medicaid Spending: Are We on the Flat of the Curve?

For the U.S. Medicare population as a whole, previous studies show that additional medical spending at the margin is ineffective. For the elderly population overall, higher spending on health care does not appear to improve health outcomes or quality of life. The Medicaid literature, however, has shown benefits of increased spending on lower income populations such as single mothers. This suggests that there may be beneficial effects of spending on different segments of the Medicare population, particularly those most at risk - the low-income elderly. We use data from the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey to examine whether increased medical spending results in differential use of medical services and/or improved health outcomes for low-income elderly who are dually-eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. We utilize state-level variation in Medicaid spending in a difference-in differences framework comparing the dual-eligible population to the near-eligible population just above the means test cutoff to investigate whether additional spending by Medicaid results in differences in health and service use for low-income elderly. Preliminary results suggest that additional spending leads to small increases in drug spending and no other significant increases in utilization or health improvements.

Health Insurance Costs and Employment Outcomes by Age

Health insurance costs are one reason that employers may be reluctant to hire older workers. Higher health insurance costs are often correlated with other factors of employment, such as firm size, which can also be correlated with employment outcomes. This paper uses state health insurance mandates, which are correlated with higher health care costs, as a source of exogenous variation in an instrumental variables (IV) strategy to identify the causal effects of health care costs on employment of older workers. Using this instrument, I find that increasing health care costs significantly lower men’s employment. Thus it appears that rising health insurance costs for older workers are partly responsible for decreasing employment of older potential workers. Although people with higher health care costs are less likely to be employed, older workers do not seem to be singled out; employment and labor force rates for older potential workers are in fact less affected by higher health care costs than are employment outcomes for younger.