The Sexual Orientation Wage Gap for Racial Minorities

We explore the sexual orientation wage gap across four race and ethnic groups in the 2000 U.S. Census: Asian, black, Hispanic, and white. Using decomposition analysis, we explore if racial minority groups experience the same pattern of sexual orientation wage differences as their white counterparts, and how racial and sexual orientation wage differences interact over the distribution of wages. For men, we show a combined unexplained penalty greater than the sum of their individual unexplained race and sexual-orientation differentials. Racial minority lesbians, however, earn higher wages than what the sum of their racial and sexual-orientation analyses would suggest.