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Studies of discrimination are often both depressing and unsurprising. It doesn’t pay to be part of a minority group? Well, knock me down with a feather. But some do manage to defy expectations. Several academic papers have found that on average, lesbians earn more than otherwise similar heterosexual women. And although one might have expected improving gay rights to have bolstered lesbians’ pay, in fact, the premium seems to be shrinking.
A review summarising 24 papers covering rich countries between 1991 and 2018 found that on average lesbians earned 7 per cent more than heterosexual women, even after adjusting for differences in age and education. The gap was most pronounced in the US. There was no difference in France and Sweden, for example, and a penalty in Australia and Greece. Meanwhile, on average gay men earned around 7 per cent less than similar heterosexual ones.
A different study by Lee Badgett of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and co-authors found that with similar adjustments for factors such as age and education, the premium in hourly wages for US women in same-sex couples fell from about 20 per cent in 1990, to 10 per cent in 2000, to almost nothing by 2018. By contrast, the wage penalty for gay men showed “no obvious trend” since 2000.
Some scepticism that the premium was ever real is reasonable. After all, anti-discrimination laws weren’t exactly implemented on a whim, and there is evidence that employers are less keen on CVs from openly gay applicants. Perhaps the premium was merely the product of selective reporting, whereby higher earners were more comfortable sharing their sexuality with surveyors. But although this is plausible, why would it apply to women and not men?
Other explanations include that it was the result of wage-enhancing stereotypes, which have since faded. Perhaps managers perceived lesbians as assertive and ambitious, and promoted them accordingly. Again, this is possible, though a little tricky to square with recruiters’ cool treatment of lesbians’ CVs.
Differences in family responsibilities could be another factor; lesbians are certainly less likely to have children. In the US in the mid-2010s, only a fifth of lesbian women had a child at home, compared with a third of heterosexual women. Same-sex couples also seem less likely to practise extreme specialisation when it comes to child-rearing — they are less likely to have one member out of paid work.
It seems unlikely that the presence of children can explain all the historical gap. A study of US women published in 2007, for example, found that the lesbian pay premium persisted even after controlling for differences in family circumstances.
There is, however, compelling evidence that family matters. A study of Norwegians by Martin Eckhoff Andresen of the University of Oslo and Emily Nix of the University of Southern California found that heterosexual women see a persistent drop in their income after giving birth, whereas the fall among both lesbian parents disappears after two years. A different study found evidence that after American states made it easier for same-sex couples to adopt children, the lesbian wage premium fell, at least at first.
It could be that lesbians have on average had different expectations about family life, and so made greater career investments. Consistent with this, one study found a much smaller premium among lesbians who were at one point married to a man.
A recent working paper by Raquel Carrasco of the Charles III University of Madrid and Ana Nuevo-Chiquero of the University of Edinburgh finds that in the US women in same-sex couples are less likely to have occupations classified as “routine”, after adjusting for differences in education, parenthood and even for their chances of being in the labour force. (Lesbians are much more likely to be in the labour force.)
Their theory is that lesbians are less likely to expect career interruptions because of childcare, and so are not put off occupations where such breaks would be penalised. They also find much smaller differences for younger women, which could help to explain why the wage gap has faded.
Badgett, a pioneer of research in this field, reckons that the historical premium may have appeared at least partly because lesbians’ greater work experience was not measured properly in existing research. And her best bet is that the premium is disappearing because the (poorly measured) experience of heterosexual women has been converging with that of lesbians. As norms have shifted, perhaps defying them now looks different.
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