Sexual Orientation, Earnings, and Occupational Choice

Heather Antecol, Simon Fraser University
Anneke Jong, Claremont McKenna College
Michael D Steinberger, Pomona College

The sexual orientation wage gap is not the same for women and men. It is well-established in the economic literature that a while gay men tend to earn less than their heterosexual counterparts, lesbian women tend to earn more than their heterosexual peers. We use the 2000 Census and compare workers with same sex partners to married and cohabitating heterosexual workers. We show the sexual orientation wage gap varies greatly by age and heterosexual comparison group. We then examine the role occupational sorting plays in the sexual orientation wage differential, specifically sorting into occupations dominated by one sex. Using a DiNardo, Fortin, Lemieux decomposition we are able to estimate the effect of differential occupational sorting into heavily and lightly male dominated occupations in explaining the sexual orientation wage gap for both gays and lesbians.