Impact of Old Age on an Occupation’s Image Over 210 Years: An Age Premium for Doctors, Lawyers, and Soldiers

Abstract

As older adults continue to contribute to the labor force, it is critical that perceptions of them reflect these contributions. We explore whether portraying older adults based on their occupational roles instead of their age is linked to more positive sentiments and test the possibility of an age premium. We created the largest historical corpus of American English—a 600-million-word dataset with over 150,000 texts—spanning 210 years (1810–2019). Top descriptors ( N = 675,213) of nouns related to age, occupation, and age × occupation over 21 decades were compiled and rated for valence (negative-positive) on a 5-point scale. Occupational role-based framing was associated with more positive portrayals than age-based framing. Positive portrayals of older lawyers increased by 22.6% over 210 years. Older doctors (−1.4%) and older soldiers (−10.7%) experienced a decline in positive portrayals, though sentiments toward older doctors, lawyers, and soldiers remained more positive than those toward older adults.