Homosexual men have significantly lower personal incomes than heterosexual individuals
Homosexual women have higher incomes than straight womenCanadian Journal of Economics doi: 10.1111/j.1540-5982.2008.00502.x
Montreal, Canada – October 29, 2008 – A new study in the Canadian Journal of Economics provides the first evidence on sexual orientation and economic outcomes in Canada. The study found that gay men have 12 percent lower personal incomes and lesbians have 15 percent higher personal incomes than heterosexual men and women.
Christopher S. Carpenter of The Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California Irvine used data from the Canadian Community Health Survey which includes standard demographic questions as well as self-reports on sexual orientation.
Like previous patterns found in the U.S. and the U.K., results show that gay men have significantly lower personal incomes than similarly situated straight individuals, while lesbians have significantly higher personal incomes than straight women.
Also, similar to gay and straight differences in the U.S., gay men and lesbians in Canada are more likely to live in urban areas and more highly educated than heterosexuals in Canada.
"This is the first work to document statistically and economically meaningful differentials associated with sexual orientation in Canada," Carpenter concludes. "The long-term significance of the study will be to further the call for more research into the causes and consequences of gay/straight differences in Canada and elsewhere."
Sexual orientation, work, and income in Canada
Carpenter, Christopher S.
We provide the first evidence on sexual orientation and economic outcomes in Canada using confidential data that ask adults a direct question about their sexual orientation. Gay men have 12% lower personal incomes and lesbians have 15% higher personal incomes than otherwise similar heterosexual men and women, respectively. Different labour force patterns can account for some of the income differentials. We also document large differences in educational attainment, childrearing, and urbanicity that generally mirror patterns found in the US. Finally, we show that applying couples-based approaches common in this literature greatly overstates the magnitudes of gay/straight income gaps.
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5 comments:
I thought Gay men seem to lived it up pretty good;were flamboyant
They don't have a wife and kids so maybe they don't try to make as much$,same for single,straight people-maybe they can live a simpler life or indulge in their fancies more ,be Dandy.Or maybe they don't have the same aggressive social life many straight people have,which can lead to education and income amongst the straight crowd-(same thing straight people miss that drop out of school due to problems and miss the boat,so to speak).Then again it seems Gays maybe wouldn't fit in anywhere except in their own little world.I've met some gays and I never saw any lack of normal human drive for income,and comfort.But if you sleep with 200 men a nite ,who has time for work???
"Men generally make more money than women, so it is expected that men who are more feminine biologically will make less money"
But gay men are a mix of feminized and non-feminized traits, so it's not always easy to predict, a priori, which will be which.
For instance gay men have many male typical mating psychology traits: high sex drives, multiple partner preference (not the same thing, btw), and preference for looks and youth.
But if you sleep with 200 men a nite ,who has time for work???
This is a myth. (I was just figuring it out then, but all the most representative surveys reveal similar findings)
Gay men have approximately the same to only moderately higher numbers of sexual partners than straight men. Which is to be expected if lifetime partner preference is heavily bounded by evolutionary-calibrated parameters. For most men in history, sleeping with as many women as possible likely harmed reproductive fitness, so there would be balancing selection, keeping extreme polygamist phenotypes rare.
An exception would be if whatever disrupts orientation, also disrupted partner number preference, but this is doubtfully the case here. However many sex partners gay guys take, it's probably a good indicator of how many sex partners straight men would take if women were just as polygamist as men.
This shows that the sex difference isn't as large as popularly believed. Men have a good deal of monogamist instinct.
Gay men make less largely due to the nature of employment. They also tend to have fewer family financial costs which is why gay men are seen to have more disposable income.
Someone should point out the fact that there are other cultural factors at play here besides the 'women make less money than men' and so blah blah blah theory. One might also look at other factors. Western culture is far more tolerant of homosexual women than it is of homosexual men. Homosexual women may have an advantage over homosexual men when seeking employment.
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