Abstract
In this paper, I study the impact of legal differences in state employment nondiscrimination acts (ENDAs) for gay men and lesbian women on labor market outcomes. Employing a DDD approach, I show that enacting an employment non-discrimination act is associated with increased wages of gay men and decreased employment of lesbian women. If all employment non-discrimination acts are treated as identical, these laws increased the hourly wages of gay men by 2.7% and decreased the employment of lesbian women by 1.7% and their hours worked by 0.7 hours. The results show that the strength of the law can result in heteroge-neous effects of the laws for gay men, but not for lesbian women. ENDAs with both punitive and compensatory damage provisions resulted in smaller wage increases for gay men than ENDAs with only compensatory damage provisions. ENDAs with longer statutes of limitations for complaints increased the employment of gay men, whereas laws with shorter statutes of limitations decreased employment. Based on the estimates from the state-level employment non-discrimination acts, I argue that extending federal protections under Title VII would lead to a small increase in the wages of gay men, but would significantly reduce the employment of lesbian women.
Highlights
Beginning with Badgett (1995), researchers have accumulated evidence of disparities in the labor market outcomes between homosexuals and heterosexuals
I explored the effect that the passage of employment nondiscrimination acts (ENDAs) at the state-level had on the labor market outcomes of gay men and lesbian women
The results showed that ENDAs led to a decline in the wage gap between gay men and married heterosexual men, and reduced the employment of lesbian women
Summary
Beginning with Badgett (1995), researchers have accumulated evidence of disparities in the labor market outcomes between homosexuals and heterosexuals. There is inconclusive evidence of wage differentials for lesbian women, with differences in fertility and selection into the labor market potentially explaining the differences (Klawitter 2015).. When employment nondiscrimination acts work as intended, the labor market outcomes of the protected group gradually improve, as appears to have happened for black men (Collins 2003; Donohue and Heckman 1991; Landes 1968; Neumark and Stock 2006). Employers may reduce the number of employees they hire from the protected group (Bloch 1994), as may have happened for women and older workers (Beegle and Stock 2003; Lahey 2008; Neumark and Stock 2006).
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