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Journal of Labor Economics Vol. 32 No. 1 2014

Sexual Orientation, Prejudice, and Segregation

Erik Plug1; Dinand Webbink2; Nick Martin3

1 University of Amsterdam · 2 Erasmus University Rotterdam · 3 The University of Queensland

open access

Abstract

This article examines whether gay and lesbian workers sort into tolerant occupations. With information on sexual orientation, prejudice, and occupational choice taken from Australian Twin Registers, we find that gays and lesbians shy away from prejudiced occupations. We show that our segregation results are largely driven by those gay and lesbian workers with disclosed identities and are robust to the inclusion of unobserved factors that are inherited and observed factors that strongly correlate with productive skills and vocational preferences. Our segregation estimates are consistent with prejudice-based theories of employer and employee discrimination against gay and lesbian workers.

DOI
10.1086/673315
Volume
32
Issue
1
Pages
123-159
Language
en
Sources
openalex crossref

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