重新理解年齡區分：以法律手段應對年齡歧視的誤區

The Misunderstanding of Age Discrimination: Why China Should hot Enact Its Age Discrimination Law

社會和學術界普遍期待以法律手段解決年齡歧視，但這一主張存在眾多問題。年齡歧視的性質與其說是身份性歧視，不如說是市場中的信息篩選規則。從平等保護的角度看，生命週期理論提示我們，老齡人並沒有受到不公平對待，因為公平必須以整個生命週期而非某個年齡片段進行比較。同時，老齡人作為一個整體也並非就業市場上的弱勢群體。從手段目的合理性的角度看，以法律手段反對年齡歧視可能只會對少部分老齡精英具有正面作用，對於處於弱勢地位的某些老齡人來說，反而可能具有負面作用。我國目前不應當將年齡歧視納入法律反歧視的範圍。

Chinese society and academia has proposed to enact its age discrimination law for a long time. However, this proposal has several problems. From the perspective of the essence of the age discrimination, it is more of a proxy for information selecting than a matter of discrimination. From the perspective of equal protection, the life-cycle model would prove that the elderly are not treated unequally by the society and the elderly are not a group of disadvantaged group. From the perspective of means-end rationality, the age discrimination law would not have any positive affect on reducing the unemployment of the elderly. Based on these reasons, China should not enact its age discrimination law.