I have experienced age discrimination firsthand since I’ve become semi-retired, and my wife assures me that it is even worse for women. Yet when I started out in politics as a 35-year-old candidate for the Atlanta City Council, I benefited from prejudice against older candidates.
I won that election against arguably more deserving candidates who had sacrificed much in their lives for civil rights and other worthy causes. They had a great deal to offer, but many of the voters believed that because of my relatively young age, the enthusiasm I brought to campaigning and the optics of the picture-perfect image of my family, I was the better choice. Once in office I worked hard to earn my constituents’ trust, but far too often when inexperienced candidates win, constituents lose because of the time it takes for new public officials to get up to speed.
In an open election, one could argue that, notwithstanding age bias, democracy wins out in the end. But when it comes to employment in government, age-related job discrimination creates another kind of problem. While much of the current attention to government workforce issues centers on attracting young people to public service, older applicants are too often denied an opportunity to put their experiences to work in the business of governing. Public officials who lead local and state governments forfeit the intuitional knowledge and expertise those employees could bring.
One of my biggest problems with the biases around age is that they assume all individuals over a certain age are exactly alike. When I became president of Georgia Piedmont Technical College in 2012, two of my early initiatives were to open a health and fitness center and develop a holistic health program called “Be ACTive.” I did this because I believed that encouraging the college community to be physically healthy should be part of education. But I also noticed that while some of my employees were decades younger than me, I was in better health than many of them. We all know that both the physical and mental health of an individual can vary drastically based on factors including diet, exercise, heredity and the environmental conditions where one lives or works. But too many employers still assume that younger workers are automatically in better health, and that is not always the case.
Nor is it always the case when it comes to the kinds of intelligence individuals can bring to bear. Writing in The Atlantic, Arthur C. Brooks, author of the book From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life, cites the work of a British-American psychologist who described two basic types of intelligence — “fluid” and “crystalized.” You are more likely to find the latter in older workers, Brooks writes, with a knack for “combining complex ideas, understanding what they mean and relating them to others.” He adds that “as a young adult, you can solve problems quickly; as you get older, you know which problems are worth solving.” These differences are supported by research on cognitive abilities and academic skills.
Older employees also have more to offer than a particular kind of intelligence: They make for good mentors. Government leaders might find that hiring more of them in roles where they draw from their reservoir of experience and knowledge can help those leaders and younger, less experienced staff members avoid making costly mistakes. I’ve written about the rising expectations some new mayors face. The average age of a mayor in the U.S. has dropped from 59 six years ago to 52 today. There is certainly nothing wrong with younger people serving in leadership roles in elective office, but how much better off would their administrations be if they diversified their staffs by hiring and retaining older and experienced workers who are at a place in their careers when they no longer find satisfaction in career-hopping or trying to land the next big job?
We all know that there are laws against age discrimination, but those laws can be ineffective and hard to enforce because you have to be able to prove that you were intentionally discriminated against simply because of your age. Proving any type of discrimination is extremely difficult, but public officials must recognize their own biases against older employees and work to mitigate those prejudices and avoid violations of civil rights protections afforded older workers.
Whether age-related issues drive President Biden out of his race for re-election is out of our control. What is in our control, though, are our attitudes about the worth and value of older Americans. In some societies, because of their wisdom elderly people are placed on a pedestal. In the U.S., we seem to be always asking, “Why are they still alive?”
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
