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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Sexual Orientation Wage Gap: The Role Of Occupational Sorting And Human Capital, Heather Antecol, Anneke Jong, Michael Steinberger
Sexual Orientation Wage Gap: The Role Of Occupational Sorting And Human Capital, Heather Antecol, Anneke Jong, Michael Steinberger
CMC Faculty Publications and Research
Using data from the 2000 U.S. Census, the authors explore two alternative explanations for the sexual orientation wage gap: occupational sorting, and human capital differences. They find that lesbian women earned more than heterosexual women irrespective of marital status, while gay men earned less than their married heterosexual counterparts but more than their cohabitating heterosexual counterparts. Results of a Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition indicate that the relative wage advantages observed for some groups of lesbians and gay men were mainly owing to greater levels of human capital accumulation (particularly education), while occupational sorting had little or no influence. The relative wage penalties …