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Show Older Women Are Outstanding In Clerical Work Although there have been predictions pre-dictions that older women may find it increasingly hard to get jobs in the next few years there are positive facets to the picture that cannot be overlooked, suggests sug-gests the Institute of Life Insurance. Insur-ance. One of these facets is a study which grew out of an observation observa-tion by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: Sta-tistics: that as workers reach and pass the age of 45, "when their training and experience should be an asset, they often meet resistance when seeking a new position." To see if productivity really drops as a worker grows older, the bureau recently looked into the job performance of clerical workers of all ages who worked for 21 large business firms and five federal agencies. The older workers made outstanding out-standing scores. Most of them happened to be women. Three important discoveries came out of the study: 1. Workers in the older age groups had a steadier rate of production, with "considerably less variation from week to week than workers in the younger age groups." 2. Many workers in the older ages exceeded the performance of younger workers. 3. On the basis of amount of work produced per hour, older workers did just as well as the younger ones. "Workers in the higher age groups not only maintained an average output rate equal to that of younger groups but also maintained main-tained an equal degree of accuracy." accu-racy." "Thus arbitrary barriers to the hiring of older workers which are related to rate of output seem unwarranted. The findings substantiate the need for individual indi-vidual evaluation of workers. "The relationship between age of operator and total face value of policies is as one would expect. ex-pect. Younger farmers with dependents de-pendents are conscious of their need for family protection and are using insurance to meet this need. However, because they are not fully established in farming, they are limited in the amount they can invest in family protection. protec-tion. They are trying to reduce their mortgage debt and improve im-prove their equity position. Consequently Con-sequently their average coverage is less than for farmers in the middle and older age groups even though a higher percentage of them are insured." Incidentally the Institute of Life Insurance points out it was for just this reason that policies such as the family income plan were developed. This combination combina-tion of permanent life insurance and temporary insurance gives needed protection during the early years of family life. If the family were to lose its father while the children are still quite young, this particular policy would provide the widow with a steady income for a specified number of years, after which she would receive the permanent amount of life insurance in the policy. Having an income could help her hold on to the farm, for a time at least, if she wanted to. The Vermont farmers were asked why they bought life insurance. in-surance. The reason given most frequently was "Protection for the family." Other reasons reflected re-flected the farmers' concern that their families be unburdened by final expenses and debts. Some farmers said they regarded life insurance as something of an investment, in-vestment, and also as a way of providing income. Most of the life insurance policies owned by the farm operators were of the permanent type, including endowment en-dowment insurance. |