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Title: Pride, Prejudice, and Wages: An Empirical Assessment of Models of Taste-Based Discrimination for Gay Men

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2016

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Abstract: There is a well-documented wage penalty for gay men in the United States. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that gay men earn between 11% and 15% less than straight men. In this paper, I test whether models of taste-based discrimination can explain the gay wage penalty in the United States. I combine restricted access data from the General Social Survey with estimated wage penalties from the Census data to estimate the empirical relationship between prejudice and wage penalties. I find no evidence the Becker model of discrimination explains the presence of a gay wage penalty. I show there is strong evidence that search models of discrimination are able to explain the gay wage penalty. Wage penalties in the United States are positively correlated with the share of the population that is prejudiced against homosexuals. The size of the gay population is negatively correlated with the wage penalty. The results suggest that changes in prejudice between 1990 and 2014 can explain up to 25% of the decline in the gay wage penalty over that period.

Url: http://www.sofi.su.se/polopoly_fs/1.315053.1484157092!/menu/standard/file/JMP_IanBurn.pdf

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Authors: Burn, Ian

Publisher: University of California-Irvine

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure

Countries: United States