Responses to Risk and Marginalization among LGBTQ+ Populations

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

LGBTQ+ individuals have long faced structural barriers and social stigmas that shape their experiences across a range of domains, including health, economic opportunity, and political representation. These challenges often manifest in unique and understudied ways, particularly given the historical lack of data that adequately captures the realities of sexual minority populations. This session brings together three papers that use creative empirical strategies and novel data sources to examine how LGBTQ+ individuals respond to risk and exclusion in the United States. Together, these studies offer important insights into behavioral adaptations, political resilience, and economic mobility among marginalized communities.

The first paper leverages a newly digitized dataset of over 170,000 personal ads posted by sexual minority men in the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ publication during the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This dataset offers rare, time-stamped insights into the preferences and behaviors of a population often missing from conventional surveys. By combining machine learning, historical newspaper archives, and causal inference strategies, the paper identifies how individuals adapted their behavior in response to the earliest reports of AIDS.

The second paper examines the mental health consequences of hate crimes and assesses the role of LGBTQ+ political representation in mitigating those effects. Using data from public health surveillance systems, federal hate crime statistics, and biographical records of elected officials, the study employs a difference-in-differences framework to evaluate whether communities with LGBTQ+ leaders experience smaller declines in mental health following increases in hate crime. The results highlight the protective capacity of descriptive representation in the face of identity-based threats.

The third paper documents persistent intergenerational mobility gaps between LGBQ and heterosexual individuals in the United States. Using nationally representative survey data and comparisons between LGBQ respondents and their heterosexual siblings, the study isolates how economic outcomes diverge even within families. It explores how occupational sorting and gendered labor market dynamics contribute to these disparities, while pointing to unexplained gaps that suggest deeper structural inequities.

Together, these papers offer new evidence on how LGBTQ+ populations adapt to risk and exclusion, and demonstrate the power of innovative data and methods in uncovering these dynamics.

Policy Area

• Population and Migration Issues

Secondary Policy Area

• Social Equity and Race

Chair

• Nathaniel M Tran, University of Illinois, Chicago

Discussants

• Nathaniel M Tran, University of Illinois, Chicago

• Benjamin Jacob Harrell, Trinity College

Organizer

• Hasan Shahid, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Individual Presentations

• Behavioral Responses to Risk: Evidence from Personal Ads - Presenting Author: Hasan Shahid, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

• The Social Consequence of Hate Crime and Role of Sexual Minority Politicians in Community Responses - Presenting Author: Ke Zeng, NORC at the University of Chicago

• Intergenerational Mobility of LGBQ+ Individuals - Presenting Author: Cameron Hill Deal, Harvard University

• LGBTQ Identity in Adolescence and the Peer Effects of “Coming Out” - Presenting Author: Hannah Ruebeck, Hamilton College