EVERYONE knows that labour markets are not objective. Whether it is skin colour,gender, or some other characteristic, and minority groups tend to fare worse than the one group that,at least on average, seems to live life with the "easy" setting on: white, and well-educated,men. For every dollar earned by a white non-hispanic man in full-time work, the average white woman in America earns 78 cents, or an average Latina woman only 56 cents. Gay men are no exception to this: even knocking out the influence of factors like education and experience they earn less on average than straight men,by around 5% in France and the UK, and 12-16% in Canada and America. But one minority group seems to carry out better than others: lesbians. Why?Research into this area is tricky; getting decent data is hard, or asking people to reveal their sexual orientation can be even harder. But studies across the world (in Canada,America, Germany, and Britain and the Netherlands) tend to uncover the same phenomenon; while gay men suffer an earnings penalty,gay women seem to earn more than straight women. In a survey of 29 studies published in January 2015, Marieka Klawitter of the...
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Source: economist.com