Sexual Orientation and Earnings: New Evidence from the United Kingdom

Abstract

Most prior work on sexual orientation and labor market earnings has relied either on individual-level surveys with small samples of sexual minorities or on large samples of same-sex couples. For this study, the authors use a large individual-level data set from the United Kingdom that allows investigation of both constructs. They replicate the well-documented lesbian advantage and gay male penalty in couples-based comparisons but show that these effects are absent in similarly specified models of non-partnered workers. This finding suggests that couples-based samples overstate the true earnings differences attributable to a minority sexual orientation as well as that household specialization plays an important role in the lesbian earnings advantage. Results also show that no significant lesbian advantage or gay male penalty is observed in London. Finally, they find robust evidence that bisexual men earn significantly less than otherwise similar heterosexual men. The authors discuss how the effects reconcile with theories of specialization and discrimination.

If Queers were Counted: An Inquiry into European Socioeconomic Data on LGB(TI)QS

“…Data information needs to be purchased by the researchers (Statistics Sweden n.d.). 9 Aksoy, Carpenter, and Frank (2018) replicate the well-documented lesbian advantage and gay male penalty in couples-based comparisons, but show that these effects are absent in similarly specified models of non-partnered workers, which is an interesting avenue, given the couple bias of most European surveys. 10 Data on marriages and divorces at the national level are based on the annual demographic data collections in the field of demography carried out by Eurostat.…”

“…Furthermore, for feminist economics, the question of socioeconomic status becomes particularly relevant with regard to an intra-categorical analysis of the status of women, since lesbian women, that is, women who are, in the sense of Gary S. Becker (1981), "deviants" from the heteronormative household model as suggested by the New Home Economics, are still largely invisible in socioeconomic datasets. The latest research has once again confirmed that lesbians' household incomes rank below those of heterosexual and gay male households, most likely because of a doubling of the female-to-male gender pay gap, even though their individual incomes tend to be higher than the incomes of heterosexual women (see Ahmed, Andersson, and Hammarstedt [2011] for the case of Sweden; Aksoy, Carpenter, and Frank [2018] for the United Kingdom; or Badgett [2007] for the United States).…”

“…Only Sweden provides a register-based database of health insurance and labor market studies (Longitudinal Integration Database for Health Insurance and Labour Market Studies [LISA]) for the whole population, which has been used by Swedish researchers to examine the socioeconomic status of LGBQs in Sweden (Ahmed, Andersson, and Hammarstedt 2011). 8 Cevat G. Aksoy, Christopher S. Carpenter, and Jefferson Frank (2018) used the 2012-14 UK IHS, combined with high-quality labor market earnings data from the country's Annual Population Survey (APS), creating a sample of more than 2,500…”

Sexual orientation at work: Documenting and understanding wage inequality

“…Evidence from the United Kingdom also points to diminishing wage differentials after accounting for human capital and demographic differences. Aksoy et al () draw on the U.K. Integrated Household Survey, which asks self‐reported sexual orientation and relationship status, and find that partnered gay and bisexual men working full‐time earn less than heterosexual men with similar demographic and human capital characteristics, but no wage difference for non‐partnered men.…”

“…Same‐sex couples do tend to be more egalitarian in their division of household labor, but there is still specialization between partners in how they allocate paid and unpaid labor (Goldberg, Smith, & Perry‐Jenkins, ; Jaspers & Verbakel, ; Kurdek, ; Prickett, Martin‐Storey, & Crosnoe, ). For instance, Aksoy et al () find that lesbian women specialize less than heterosexual women, which may explain why lesbians have a wage advantage. Evidence also suggests that gay men do not have access to the fatherhood bonus (Mize, ; Waite & Denier, ).…”