Friday, September 21, 2007

Interesting Findings on Sexual orientation and Wages...






More GREAT stuff from George Borjas' blog!


"A new paper by Heather Antecol, Anneke Jong, and Michael Steinberger reports some very interesting results:

"Using data from the 2000 U.S. Census, we document and explore three alternative explanations for the sexual orientation wage gap: occupational sorting, human capital differences, and discrimination.

"We find lesbian women earn more than their heterosexual counterparts irrespective of marital status while gay men earn less than their married heterosexual counterparts but more than their cohabitating heterosexual counterparts. Using an Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition we find that differences in human capital accumulation (particularly education) are the main reason behind the observed wage advantages, while discrimination and occupational sorting play a minimal role at best."



That last line's a real kicker, isn't it? "Differences in human capital (ie. EDUCATION) are THE MAIN REASON behind observed wage advantages, while DISCRIMINATION PLAYS a MINIMAL ROLE, at best."
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2 comments:

  1. Meanwhile, back at the ranchJanuary 28, 2008 at 2:51 PM

    I'm not sure I am following your point. Wage differences may be correlated to education? I think that intuitively most of us know that. Why is this a kicker?

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  2. JMKJanuary 28, 2008 at 4:58 PM

    That's not the last line, THIS, "while discrimination and occupational sorting play a minimal role at best," IS.

    There may well be occasional "discrimination" in wages, but I think actual cases are few and far between.

    I believe that was Dr. Borjas point as well.

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