Occupational Achievements of Same‐Sex Couples in the United States by Gender and Race

• Author: Coral Río,Olga Alonso‐Villar
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irel.12246
• Published date: 01 October 2019
• Date: 01 October 2019

Occupational Achievements of Same-Sex

Couples in the United States by Gender and

Race

CORAL DEL R



IO and OLGA ALONSO-VILLAR*

This article offers a framework that allows for the simultaneous comparison of all

sexual orientation–gender–race/ethnicity groups after controlling for characteris-

tics. The analysis suggests that occupations matter in explaining earnings differ-

ences among groups. The article also displays the high magnitude of the gender

wage gap in an intersectional framework. The sexual orientation wage premium

of lesbians is quite small for blacks and much higher for Hispanics and Asians

than for whites. For men, departing from the white heterosexual model involves a

substantial punishment; the racial penalty is larger for heterosexuals whereas the

sexual orientation penalty is greater for whites.

Introduction

Since the mid-1990s, there has been increasing economic literature on the

association between sexual orientation and position in the U.S. labor market.

Most studies identify a wage penalty for gay men and a wage premium for les-

bian women compared with their heterosexual peers (Allegretto and Arthur

2001; Badgett 2007; Klawitter 2015). Regarding occupations, scholars provide

evidence of a high concentration of homosexual workers in certain kinds of

jobs (Antecol, Jong, and Steinberger 2008; Badgett and King 1997; Baumle,

Compton, and Poston 2009; Ueno, Pe~

na-Talamantes, and Roach 2013). Some

of these investigations find that lesbian women (and gay men) have a higher

(and lower, respectively) representation in highly masculinized occupations

JEL codes: J15, J16, D63.

*The authors’affiliations are, respectively, Universidade de Vigo, Vigo, Spain. E-mail: crio@uvigo.es; and

Universidade de Vigo, Vigo; Spain. E-mail: ovillar@uvigo.es. The authors acknowledge financial support

from the Ministerio de Econom



ıa, Industria y Competitividad, the Agencia Estatal de Investigaci

on, and

Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (ECO2016-76506-C4-2-R and ECO2017-82241-R) and Xunta de

Galicia (ED431B2019/34). This article was partially elaborated while the authors were visiting scholars at

the Economics Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The authors are especially indebted

to Lee Badgett for useful discussions and hospitality and thank Lisa Saunders, Arindrajit Dube, and Michael

Ash for helpful comments.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, DOI: 10.1111/irel.12246. Vol. 58, No. 4 (October 2019). ©2019 Regents of the

Universit y of Calif ornia. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA,

and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK.

704

than straight women (and men). However, the few studies dealing with the

occupational sorting of homosexual workers have undertaken their analyses

using broad classifications of occupations with few categories or have focused

only on a few detailed titles. Contrary to segregation by gender (or race), there

is little research on the extent of occupational segregation by sexual orientation

and its effects on earnings (Antecol, Jong, and Steinberger 2008).

The magnitude of segregation by sexual orientation has been recently quan-

tified. Using a fine occupational classification and distinguishing among four

groups—women and men living in same-sex and different-sex couples—Del

R

ıo and Alonso-Villar (2019) showed that partnered lesbians in the United

States are the most evenly distributed group across occupations whereas their

straight counterparts represent the group most unevenly distributed (i.e., it is

the group experiencing more overrepresentation in some occupations and

underrepresentation in others). The levels of unevenness for gay and heterosex-

ual men, which are similar to one another, are between the levels for lesbian

and heterosexual women. The study reveals that the occupational achievements

of partnered gay men are larger than those of partnered heterosexual men, and

also that the occupational achievements of partnered lesbians are much smaller

than those of either gay or heterosexual men, although greater than those of

heterosexual partnered women. However, the occupational attainments of part-

nered gay men and lesbians decrease dramatically when controlling for charac-

teristics (education, mainly).

This article aims to contribute to the ongoing literature by adding a new fac-

tor into the analysis of occupational segregation by sexual orientation in the

United States and its effects on wages: individuals’race/ethnicity. There is

abundant empirical work that shows that apart from gender, race affects how

people fare in the labor market and, in particular, the occupations they enter

(Alonso-Villar and Del R



ıo 2017; Cotter, Hermsen, and Vanneman 2003; Del

R

ıo and Alonso-Villar 2015; King 1992; Reskin, Hargin, and Hirsh 2004).

Gender and race interplay to privilege some demographic groups and disad-

vantage others (Branch 2007; Browne and Misra 2003; Darity and Mason

1998), and in this hierarchical system white men are the group at the top of

the ranking. Little is known, however, about how gender and race interact with

sexual orientation, as the scarcity of surveys that accurately account for the

gay and lesbian population in all its diversity has been an obstacle in undertak-

ing these kinds of studies.

Evidence exists that the racial composition of the gay and lesbian population

plays a non-negligible role in explaining these men and women’s occupational

achievements and earnings (Del R

ıo and Alonso-Villar 2019). We also know

that the magnitude of lesbians’wage premiums and gay men’s wage penalties,

compared with their heterosexual peers, vary across races/ethnicities (Douglas

Sexual Orientation, Gender, and Race: Occupations / 705