ABA Family Legal Guide

Law and the Workplace

On the Job

Discrimination in the Workplace

Some benefits cost more to provide based on an employee's age. Must an employer provide all employees with exactly the same benefits even if it has to pay more for some of the employees?

Generally speaking, the employer cannot discriminate in providing benefits based on age. However, the ADEA recognizes that age affects the cost of providing some benefits. For example, the cost of providing life insurance for a sixty-year-old employee may be more than the cost of buying the same insurance for a twenty-year-old employee. So long as the employer pays the same amount in premiums for both the sixty-year-old and the twenty-year-old, it will not violate the ADEA even though the effect of paying the same premium is that the sixty-year-old will have less coverage than the twenty-year-old. However, where age does not affect the cost of the benefit, the employer cannot discriminate based on age. For example, an employer could not grant three weeks vacation to all employees under fifty but only give two weeks vacation to all employees over fifty.