Do Health Insurance and Pension Costs Reduce the Job Opportunities of Older Workers?

Using a 1991 nationwide survey of employers and 1979, 1983, 1988, and 1993 data from the Employee Benefits Supplement of the Current Population Survey, the authors examine the effects of fringe benefit provision on the decision to hire older workers. They find that higher health insurance costs, in the presence of prohibitions against age discrimination and discrimination in the provision of fringe benefits, adversely affected older workers' employment opportunities. In all five data sets over a fourteen-year period, the probability that a new hire was aged 55–64 was significantly lower in firms with health care plans than in those without, and was also significantly lower in firms with relatively costly plans than in those with less costly plans. On the other hand, neither the cost nor the presence of a defined contribution or defined benefit pension plan significantly affected that probability.