Same sex, same skills? Sexual orientation and human capital investments in marriage markets
نویسندگان
چکیده
Gay men and lesbians work less and earn less in the labor market than heterosexual men, but work more and earn more than heterosexual women. Same-sex couples share market work more equally and have fewer children than different-sex couples. This paper identifies marriage markets as a theoretical source of these differences. The paper characterizes marital matching and pre-marital human capital investments in the context of one-sided and two-sided marriage markets. It shows that, because gay men and lesbians, but not heterosexual men and women, compete with their prospective partners in the marriage market, sexual minorities make more moderate human capital investments than heterosexual men and women. When there are frictions in the marriage markets, same-sex couples are more likely than different-sex couples to share market work equally and are less likely to have children. The analysis suggests that the relative scarcity of children in same-sex households may be a consequence, as well as a cause, of less extensive specialization. ∗Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Economics, University of Michigan. Please send correspondence to [email protected]. I am grateful for comments and suggestions from Martha Bailey, Charles Brown, Tilman Börgers, Elizabeth Bruch, Brooke Helppie, Joanne Hsu, Miles Kimball, David Lam, Shanthi Ramnath, Robert J. Willis, and participants in the labor economics seminar at the University of Michigan. I would also like to thank the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan for the support I received from their Community of Scholars fellowship program.
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