Age Discrimination Takes Its Toll

Raise your hand if you’ve felt that people treat you with less respect or courtesy than others, that they act as if you’re not smart, that you get poorer service in stores and restaurants than others — in short, if you’ve felt discriminated against because of age, gender, ethnicity, income, disability, appearance, even marital status.

A startling proportion of older people report that they’ve experienced discrimination: 63 percent, in a study recently published in Research on Aging. The most commonly cited cause? “Thirty percent report being mistreated because of their age,” said the lead author Ye Luo, a Clemson University sociologist. Perceived discrimination because of gender, race or ancestry, disabilities or appearance followed in smaller proportions.

That’s a sorry enough state of affairs, but it’s all the more troubling because of an additional finding: over a two-year period, everyday discrimination is associated with higher rates of depression and poorer self-rated health.

Dr. Luo and her colleagues used national data from the federal Health and Retirement Study to measure what nearly 6,400 people — all older than age 53 when the study began in 2006 – thought about discriminatory behavior. Dr. Luo wasn’t surprised by the high proportion of people who said they had encountered it. That was consistent, she says, with previous studies.

As the researchers had expected, some people were more likely to report discrimination than others. Blacks, those who were separated or divorced or widowed, and those with fewer household assets had higher levels of perceived discrimination, as measured by questionnaires. It was less commonly perceived by whites, by the married or partnered, and by those with more assets.

Two years after the initial survey, those who perceived higher levels of discrimination had poorer health outcomes. After the researchers controlled for general stress (financial problems, for instance, or traumatic events or chronic illnesses), the most significant effects of discrimination were higher levels of depressive symptoms and lower self-rated health. (The depression effect is particularly troubling, because a recent analysis of Medicare data, published in the American Journal of Public Health, shows that blacks who have depression are less likely than non-Hispanic whites to be treated for it.)

Interestingly, the discrimination effect was stronger for everyday slights and suspicions (including whether people felt harassed or threatened, or whether they felt others were afraid of them) than for more dramatic events like being denied a job or promotion or being unfairly detained or questioned by police.

“Awful things happen and it’s a big shock, but people have ways to resist that damage,” Dr. Luo said. “With maturity, people learn coping skills.”

Everyday discrimination works differently, apparently. “It may be more difficult to avoid or adapt to,” Dr. Luo suggested. “It takes a toll you may not even realize.”

The toll may be greater than the study reports, in fact, because only two years passed between the first and second survey. With 2010 data now available, Dr. Luo and her team may gain greater insight into the continuing effects of perceived discrimination.

Aside from that short duration, another reason for caution is that we’re dealing with the respondents’ perceptions. Are people really treating them differently because of their age or race or weight? We can’t know.

Still, if one needed another reason to try to tackle age discrimination, or any sort of discrimination, here it is. It’s apparently not good for older people’s health.