SUMMARY: Do women face a tougher time finding a job than men as we age? According to economists, women 35 and up are far less likely to be considered for certain jobs than younger women or men of the same age. And the cause may be related to evolutionary biology. Economics correspondent Paul Solman reports.
PAUL SOLMAN (NewsHour): On Comedy Central's “Inside Amy Schumer,” the aging actress’ lament:
TINA FEY, Actress: You know how Sally Field was Tom Hanks’ love interest in “Punchline,” and then, like, 20 minutes later, she was his mom in “Forrest Gump”?
PAUL SOLMAN: Tina Fey is 45, Patricia Arquette 47.
PATRICIA ARQUETTE, Actress: I didn’t get this commercial last week for AARP because the director said I was too old to play Larry King’s wife.
PAUL SOLMAN: Schumer's gag, these stars were celebrating 55-year-old Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ last day playing a love interest, though Schumer used a raunchier term.
AMY SCHUMER, Actress: But what about men? Like, who tells men when it’s their last (EXPLETIVE DELETED) day?
(LAUGHTER)
JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS, Actress: Honey, men don’t have that day.
PATRICIA ARQUETTE: Never.
PAUL SOLMAN: Turns out it’s not just the case in Hollywood. Jewish Vocational Services in San Francisco is a nonprofit that helps older people find jobs. We first visited in 2009, at the height of the great recession, when complaints of age discrimination abounded.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Next: a provocative piece of writing from one of the country’s leading health care experts.
In the current “Atlantic” magazine, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel argues that the quality of human life begins to drop off by age 75, enough, he says, that he will opt out of medical treatments and let nature take its course.
A trained oncologist, Dr. Emanuel is chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, and a former Obama administration policy adviser. He is also older brother to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Hollywood talent agent Ari Emanuel. I sat down with him earlier today.
Dr. Zeke Emanuel, thank you for talking with us.
DR. EZEKIEL EMANUEL, University of Pennsylvania: It’s my great pleasure.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, you have created quite a stir: “Why I Want to Die at 75.”
Why 75? Why not 85? Why not 70?
DR. EZEKIEL EMANUEL: Well, first of all, let’s clarify, I expect to be alive at 75, and I’m not going to kill myself. I don’t believe in legalized euthanasia or assisted suicide, but I am going to stop medical treatments.
And I look at 75, when I look at all the data on physical disability, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, loss of creativity, slowing down of the mind and the body, and 75 seems like that, albeit somewhat arbitrary, moment where you get the maximum chance you’re still going to be vital and alive and vigorous.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So it’s kind of arbitrary.
DR. EZEKIEL EMANUEL: I say that, yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And you talk about something you call the American immortal. Who is this being?
DR. EZEKIEL EMANUEL: My brother. The American immortal are people who want to put off death as long as possible, want to live as long as possible, get every day out of it. They take all these — they change their diet. They exercise like mad. They take protein concoctions and all sorts of other supplements.
And it’s almost a religion for them to live as long as possible. And I think they — in their mind, they will be as vital as they are when they’re, say, 50 all the way to the end. But, of course, we all do deteriorate, we all do slow down, we all do get disabilities.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
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