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Does productivity decline with age? Does population aging harm economic growth? We exploit process-generated data from a large and typical service-sector company. We find no decline in average productivity in the age range of 20–60. This result is precisely measured. Our innovative identification strategy corrects for sample selection, endogeneity of age composition and age-cohort confounding. Our big data are essential to extract the signal from the noise that has marred many previous studies. While average productivity stays flat, we find variation according to task complexity. Productivity increases with age in teams with more demanding tasks and decreases in routine tasks.
The authors study the relation between workers' age and their productivity in work teams, based on a new and unique data set that combines data on errors occurring in the production process of a large car manufacturer with detailed information on the personal characteristics of workers related to the errors. The authors correct for non-random sample selection and the potential endogeneity of the age-composition in work teams. The results suggest that productivity in this plant which is typical for large-scale manufacturing does not decline at least up to age 60. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.