The Wage Effects of Sexual Orientation Discrimination

Abstract

This study is the first to apply the econometric tools developed in the study of race and gender discrimination to the newer question of sexual orientation discrimination. Analyzing pooled 1989–91 data from a national random sample, the General Social Survey, the author finds that gay and bisexual male workers earned from 11% to 27% less than heterosexual male workers with the same experience, education, occupation, marital status, and region of residence. There is also evidence that lesbian and bisexual women earned less than heterosexual women, but this result is not consistently statistically significant across all variable definitions and specifications.

Sexual orientation discrimination in hiring

“…In 1990 the census introduced the category "unmarried partner", which allows the researcher to identify gays and lesbians as unmarried same-sex couples. Badgett (1995) was the first to apply standard econometric techniques to study discrimination based on sexual orientation. Analyzing pooled GSS data (1989)(1990)(1991) by classifying people according to their number of same-sex experiences, she found that gays and lesbians are paid less than the general population -contrary to the common belief that they constitute one of the most affluent groups.…”

“…Badgett (1995) was the first to investigate labor market outcomes of gays and lesbians using a random data set. While her results suggested lower earnings for lesbians compared to heterosexual females, later studies indicated the contrary and indeed consistently documented an income premium for lesbian women.…”

“…Nevertheless, it should be added that lesbians as well as gay men might, in fact, put higher effort into work. Badgett (1995) suggested that gays and lesbians might try to compensate for their social stigma by turning into overachievers and working extra hard.…”

Social-Institutional Structures That Matter: A Quantitative Monograph of Sexual/Gender Minority Status and Earnings in Japan

“…Because many previous studies on the effects of sexual orientation on earnings employ Census data and uses same-sex partners as a proxy for lesbian/gay status (Waite and Denier 2015), or employs other social surveys and uses same-sex sexual behavior as an indicator of lesbian/gay status (Badgett 1995), there exist an even smaller number of studies on the effects of being bisexual on earnings. A recent study by Mize (2016) shows that bisexual women and men tend to earn the least in the labor market after accounting for human capital differences, household composition, and occupational factors, suggesting that workplace discrimination may explain low earnings among bisexual women and men.…”

“…However, almost all of the existing studies of sexual orientation and earnings currently use data from Western countries such as the United States (Badgett 1995), Canada (Carpenter 2008), the United Kingdom (Arabsheibani, Marin, and Wadsworth 2005), France (Laurent and Mihoubi 2012), Germany (Humpert 2016), the Netherlands (Plug and Berkhout 2004), Sweden (Ahmed and Hammarstedt 2010), Australia (La Nauze 2015), and Greece (Athens only) (Drydakis 2012). Thus, they may fail to take into consideration the fact that there is a possibility that their results and theoretical explanations rest on the social-institutional features of a specific society.…”