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Does It Get Better? Recent Estimates of Sexual Orientation and Earnings in the United States
Author(s) -
Carpenter Christopher S.,
Eppink Samuel T.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
southern economic journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.762
H-Index - 58
eISSN - 2325-8012
pISSN - 0038-4038
DOI - 10.1002/soej.12233
Subject(s) - earnings , sexual orientation , demographic economics , psychology , order (exchange) , health and retirement study , survey data collection , demography , economics , social psychology , sociology , accounting , statistics , finance , mathematics
Using 2013–2015 National Health Interview Survey data, we reproduce a well‐documented finding that self‐identified lesbians earn significantly more than comparable heterosexual women. These data also show — for the first time in the literature — that self‐identified gay men also earn significantly more than comparable heterosexual men, a difference on the order of 10% of annual earnings. We discuss several possible explanations for the new finding of a gay male earnings premium and suggest that reduced discrimination and changing patterns of household specialization are unlikely to be the primary mechanisms.