How status‐group power differentials shape age discrimination within U.S. federal agencies: Evidence from EEOC formal complaint filings, 2010–2019

• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Author: George A. Krause,Jungyeon Park
• Date: 01 January 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13532

RESEARCH ARTICLE

How status-group power differentials shape age

discrimination within U.S. federal agencies: Evidence

from EEOC formal complaint filings, 2010–2019

George A. Krause

1

| Jungyeon Park

1,2

1

Department of Public Administration and Policy, School of Public and International Affairs, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, USA

2

Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, University of South Alabama, Mobile, Alabama, USA

Correspondence

George A. Krause, Department of Public

Administration and Policy, School of Public and

International Affairs, University of Georgia, 280G

Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA 30602, USA.

Email: gkrause@uga.edu

Abstract

Age discrimination is a systemic problem of the American administrative state that

undermines both the caliber and performance of the U.S. federal government

workforce. A theory is proposed, anchored on discrimination against age-eligible

employees (age 40 and over) representing a social identity group, to explain how

status-group power differentials between supervisors and non-supervisors within

U.S. federal agencies explain the organizational incidence of formal discrimination

complaints. The theory predicts that the incidence of age discrimination formal

complaints is declining in the share of supervisory personnel who are discrimina-

tion age-eligible while increasing in the share of non-supervisory personnel mem-

bers who belong to this group. Evidence is obtained for these hypotheses using

objective data on Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s age discrimina-

tion formal complaints about an unbalanced panel of 130 U.S. federal agencies

between 2010 and 2019. The empirical evidence underscores the structural chal-

lenges to combatting ageism within the U.S. federal government workforce during

an era of an intergenerational personnel change.

Evidence for Practice

•Age discrimination is a major problem within the U.S. federal workforce, one

that is worsening with the “graying”demographics of government employees,

coupled with an intergenerational change in the American federal bureaucracy.

•Power imbalances that naturally occur among supervisory and non-supervisory

agency personnel have differential implications for the organizational level inci-

dence of age discrimination within U.S. federal agencies. Increasing the share of

discrimination against age-eligible supervisors, ameliorates age discrimination

problems within public organizations, while increasing the share of discrimina-

tion against age-eligible non-supervisory personnel exacerbates ageism com-

plaints levied within these organizations.

•Robust empirical support is obtained for the role that status-group differentials

between supervisors and non-supervisors, predicated on age-eligible employees, play

An earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 2021 Public Management Research Association Conference. We thank David Lewis and Bradley Wright for helpful

conversations, Anthony Bertelli, J. Edward Kellough, Kenneth J. Meier, Ellen Rubin, Amanda Rutherford, and the PAR reviewers for extremely thoughtful comments and

helpful suggestions on this project at various stages of development. Any errors or omissions that remain are the responsibility of the authors. Replication file materials for

this article are available are located at the corresponding author’s Harvard Dataverse page: George A. Krause Data Replication Materials Dataverse: https:// doi.org/10.7910/

DVN/RC0WLY.

Received: 26 July 2021 Revised: 3 June 2022 Accepted: 8 June 2022

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13532

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits useand distribution in any medium,

provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations aremade.

© 2022 The Authors. Public Administration Review published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of American Society for Public Administration.

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