Does productivity decline with age? Does population aging harm economic growth? We exploit process-generated data from a large and typical service-sector company. We find no decline in average productivity in the age range of 20–60. This result is precisely measured. Our innovative identification strategy corrects for sample selection, endogeneity of age composition and age-cohort confounding. Our big data are essential to extract the signal from the noise that has marred many previous studies. While average productivity stays flat, we find variation according to task complexity. Productivity increases with age in teams with more demanding tasks and decreases in routine tasks.

生产率会随着年龄的增长而下降吗？人口老龄化会损害经济增长吗？我们利用一家大型且典型的服务业公司的流程生成数据。我们发现20至60岁年龄段的平均生产率没有下降。该结果被精确测量。我们创新的识别策略可校正样本选择，年龄组成的内生性和年龄组混淆。我们的大数据对于从已经破坏许多先前研究的噪声中提取信号至关重要。虽然平均生产率保持稳定，但我们发现根据任务的复杂性而有所差异。在具有更高要求的团队中，生产力随着年龄的增长而增加，而在日常任务中则降低。