Cultural foundations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights

Lewis Davis

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2025, vol. 237, issue C

Abstract: I forward and empirically support a cultural theory of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. Individualism supports values of personal autonomy, the right to a private life, and acceptance of non-conforming behavior. In keeping with these values, I propose that individualism reduces homophobia and increases LGBT rights. I document a strong, negative relationship between individualism and homophobia using individual-level data from the Integrated Values Survey. At the country level, I document a strong, positive relationship between individualism and a broad index of LGBT rights. In the baseline model, a one-standard deviation increase in individualism is associated with three-quarters of a standard deviation increase in the LGBT rights index. This relationship is robust to a wide variety of controls related to other dimensions of culture, women’s empowerment, and national institutions. The relationship between individualism and LGBT rights is stronger in common law countries. I use climatic and linguistic instruments to address concerns regarding the endogeneity and measurement of individualism. This study identifies LGBT rights as part of a nexus of individual rights supported by Enlightenment values.

Keywords: Individualism and collectivism; Culture; Lesbian, Gay and bisexual rights; Gay marriage; Same sex partnerships; Non-discrimination; Sodomy laws; Sexual orientation; Institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 K38 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268125003026
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:237:y:2025:i:c:s0167268125003026

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107183

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().