Plug, E., Webbink, D. and Martin, N. (2014). Sexual Orientation, Prejudice and Segregation Journal of Labor Economics, 32(1):123--159.


  • Affiliated author
    Dinand Webbink
  • Publication year
    2014
  • Journal
    Journal of Labor Economics

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.