Marriage, sexuality & wages

In an earlier post, I asked whether the well-known marriage wage premium was due to causality or correlation. Some new Canadian research (pdf) sheds light upon this.
It estimates that, among heterosexual men working over 30 hours a week, married ones earn almost 20% more than singletons; this controls for age and education among other things
However, among gay men, the marriage premium - well, partnership premium - is just 4%.
This poses a challenge for those who think the marriage premium is due to selection effects. After all, if it were the case that the same things that make a man attractive to an employer also make him marriageable, shouldn’t this effect be as powerful for gays as straights?*
Instead, this might suggest that much of the marriage premium is causal. Maybe marrying a woman causes a man to earn more, perhaps because he expects to have to provide for children, or because he can focus more on his careers as his wife saves him time by doing housework. For gay men, marriage doesn’t have these boosts to earnings.
Does this suggest that we should encourage marriage, because it raises productivity?
No. The opposite is true for women. Married women earn almost 4% less than single ones - even controlling for having children. Maybe looking after hubby distracts a woman from her work. 
What’s more, whereas being gay is bad for a man’s earnings, it’s great for a woman’s. Lesbians earn more than straight women; this seems true in the UK as well as Canada. And whereas a woman loses money by marrying a man, she gains by shacking up with another woman; lesbians in couples earn 10% more than married women - again, controlling for having children.
If we judge policies purely by their labour market impact, it makes as much sense to encourage women to become lesbians as it does to promote heterosexual marriage - though such a policy has other drawbacks.
However, what stands out about this research is that bisexuals, men or women, earn much less than gays or straights: it‘s not clear why.
All this raises a question. Why do we hear so much about the gender pay gap, when much of this is due simply to women having children, and much less about sexuality pay gaps (gay vs straight men, bis vs others) when these might arguably reflect deeper injustices?
* Maybe not. It could be that what employers value is a conventional mindset, and married men have this whilst married gays don’t.

Comments

[Diversity]

After 40 years, you have knocked the first hole in my fixed hiring and promotion policy.

That policy is, whenever candidates seem roughly equal, to give preference to the one other employers are prejudiced against. The justification is that these people have fewer and worse opportunities, and therefore are likley to prove better value for me.

Up to today, I had included lesbians in the list of those to whom other employers were unlikely to give a fair break. Seems I was wrong.

[Toto]

Hmm, you didn't consult any childless women before writing this, did you?. Yes, they do have a gender pay gap, even when they have no eldercare responsibilities either -- another big trap which receives even less constructive attention than childcare.

There has been lots of work done on the gender pay gap, and it is complicated -- for instance older women left school at a time when they were much less likely to get formal qualifications than men were. However, there always remains a gap that cannot be explained away by any measurable differences.

[Jeffrey Krames]

I think you make a great point in that employers look for conventional things in business---whether it be in heterosexual managers or ideas that remain squarely inside the box.
However, we also know that the best managers are those that take the biggest risks---create the most unconventional products, etc.
As long as employers settle for convention their organizations will have a hard time competing with the risk takers who have routinely been rewarded throughout history.

Jeffrey Krames
http://jeffreykrames.com/
Author of The Unforced Error

[reason]

"However, we also know that the best managers are those that take the biggest risks---create the most unconventional products, etc."
Do we?

[reason]

Surely if marriage is +20% for men and -10% for women that is a net gain?

(I'm not arguing about the rights and wrong of this - just questioning the logic).

[John Meredith]

"This poses a challenge for those who think the marriage premium is due to selection effects. After all, if it were the case that the same things that make a man attractive to an employer also make him marriageable, shouldn’t this effect be as powerful for gays as straights?"

No, because straight women are selecting for different things, namely those qualities that will be useful in a father (including, will he stick around when the sex and fun go out of the window and are replaced with clearing up other people's shit, stress, fatigue, anxiety, a huge cut in income and interminable, brainless, repetive grind - which is not that far away from the average job description).

[Richard Gadsden]

I wonder if there is a problem with self-identification as bi. Some bi people I know who are in a long-term monogamous relationship cease to self-identify as bi, but as the monosexual orientation appropriate to the gender of their partner. Long-term monogamous relationships seem to enhance earning power; for non-mothers at any rate.

If bi people are less likely to be in long-term monogamous relationships, because they don't self-identify as bi any more, then that would be one part.

Also, does the bi group control for trans* and poly status? Trans* certainly costs income, poly I'm less sure about, but suspect it does, and I know both are strongly correlated with biness.

[benamery21]

A common factor here is that partners chosen by women for committed relationships make significantly more money, partners chosen by men do not. So maybe women tend to have better insight into people's potential (see casting directors?), or perhaps women do a better job on average of nurturing/supporting potential in partners?

[marriage]

Well this post is really a good subject to explore.

winnie