The politics of middle ageism

Abstract

Ageism directed at those in their middle years—middle ageism—is being given teeth by midlife downsizing, drops in real income and workforce participation, substandard employment, hiring discrimination, and court decisions that weaken age anti‐discrimination laws. This essay explores the high costs of this trend—not only for individuals currently at midlife, but for their families, the next cohorts aging into the middle years, the value of seniority, the power of employers over workers in the global workforce, and the meaning of the life course. In Europe premature superannuation became a problem decades ago. Middle ageism is becoming a problem in the US, ironically, at the same time that social justice movements have produced increases in peak wages and expectations of “seniority,” broadly defined, for women and African‐Americans. The market's attempt to drive wages to the bottom thus clashes with expanding cultural visions of age‐graded progress. This essay speculates that middle ageism may have negative effects on the age‐wage curve. Ending with a call to institute “full‐employment‐plus” (a set of programs that take life‐course issues into full consideration), the essay argues that academics and the public need to become more alert to the social construction of the midlife and the life course and the manipulation of age as a powerful category of difference.