Of all the numerous kinds of employment discrimination, hiring younger workers in preference to older ones earns the least public condemnation. That’s a growing problem, not just because equality is increasingly prominent on the political agenda but because ageism makes less and less economic sense as birth rates go down and nations age.
Since 1950, the median age of the population has increased by 47% in Europe and by 29% in North America, and the trend isn’t about to change, according to the United Nations Population Division. In the coming decades, the UN expects Asia and Latin America to age faster than today’s rich nations of the West.
