Can you be a bit more specific? Age discrimination against the young or the old? And in what context?

When investigating racism in real estate, people of different races would ask to be shown properties, and systematic direction to one neighborhood versus another was prima facie evidence of discrimination.

You can similarly examine age discrimination in hiring: offer versions of resumes that are essentially identical, except they have indicators of age which differ, e.g. year of graduation from college (1970, 1995). When the young resumes attract job interviews, it's age discrimination.

Extending that, leave the age indicators OFF the resumes, and when multiple fake appliers are invited to interviews, send young and old and see who they hire.

Both of these require large organizations hiring large numbers of similarly qualified employees.

For on the job discrimination (as opposed to hiring), the only possibility is examining statistics about who is laid off. Again, it has to be among people with similar qualifications. If ten Java developers (of similar experience) are laid off, and they are disportionately old, that would indicate age discrimination.

Answer: I guess it's really hard and isn't going to happen.

How about offering $$$ for information about unwritten policies to discriminate on age. If an HR person was offered enough to tell the world...

I am not sure what you are getting at. There is an Age Discrimination Act. It applies to employment. It is based on people being older.

Other states prohibit any discrimination on age (young or old).

In terms of housing it is not necessarily in the public interest to prevent discrimination based on age...retirment homes and communities might require an age restriction.

The methods used to prove discrimination are similar to the ones you have mentioned. I am not sure if that was your question.

There is no question that there is rampant age discrimination in hiring. You don't have to show any age indicators on the resume, just the amount of experience is enough of a give away. If you remove info from your resume, you can be accused of lying and or misdirection.

I took 5 years off after high school before going on to college, so by my resume, I seem to be 5 years younger than one might guess. I've noticed in some interviews where I've been looked up and down by the interviewer, who realized that I was older than they thought. But they didn't say anything. And although I fully qualified for the job, I didn't get it.

There's a million different excuses that can be used and there really isn't any definitive way to prove anything without a huge organization behind you. Nothing will change in this area until robots start doing the interviewing.

If they're dumb enough to do age discrimination, they'll lose valuable employees and therefore profits. Ergo, don't do anything about it - they are hurting themselves as much as anyone else and trying to force them to not do it will cause much larger problems than the problem itself.

If you think laws are going to discriminate age discrimination, you overestimate the intelligence and the integrity of the business community. Age discrimination exists, it is widely practiced, and it is extremely difficult to prove.

make that "eliminate age discrimination."