Sexual Orientation, Demography and Labor Relations

Nick Drydakis ()
Additional contact information
Nick Drydakis: Department of Economics - University of Crete, Greece

No 906, Working Papers from University of Crete, Department of Economics

Abstract: We use data from the 2008-09 Athens Area Study (AAS) to provide the first evidence on the relationship between sexual orientation and earnings in Greece. The AAS asks male adults a direct question about their sexual orientation: about 4.52% self-identify as homosexuals and 0.86% as bisexuals. Sexual orientation minorities are found to receive significantly lower monthly wages than heterosexual workers of the same age, education, health status and occupational characteristics. Moreover, there is statistically significant evidence that homosexual and bisexual men have higher unemployment rates than similarly situated heterosexuals. Of further importance is the finding that sexual orientation minorities who are also older, less educated, blue collar workers, and/or immigrants are statistically more vulnerable to wage discrimination and unemployment than comparable heterosexuals. Moreover, in the current research, in order to better understand the determinants of the wage gaps, we compare homosexual/bisexual men with both married and unmarried heterosexual men. By making these comparisons, we are able to disentangle the penalty associated with being unmarried from other human capital explanations of the wage gap. Given the legal actions in Greece that have the potential to affect sexual orientation minorities, it is important to understand the relationships between sexual orientation, demography and labor market.

Keywords: Sexual Orientation; Wage Differentials; Labour Discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 J7 J16 J31 J (search for similar items in EconPapers)
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
http://economics.soc.uoc.gr/wpa/docs/male_sexual_orientation_labor.pdf First version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:crt:wpaper:0906

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Crete, Department of Economics
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Kostis Pigounakis ().