Sexual orientation and self-employment: Evidence from Canada

• In Event: 344 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Paper Session. Sexual Minorities and Work (co-sponsored with Section on Sex and Gender)

Abstract

This is the first study to explore gay men’s and lesbian women’s propensity for self-employment. We use couple data from the 2001 and 2006 Census of Canada and the 2011 Canadian National Household Survey, and logistic regression analysis to explore the propensity for self-employment of sexual minorities in Canada. Our analysis considers occupational variability in the likelihood of self-employment. We further compare the demographic, human capital, and family characteristics of self-employed gay men and lesbian women to their heterosexual counterparts to provide potential mechanisms generating differences. We find that gay men are less likely and lesbian women more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to engage in self-employment, but this effect varies significantly across occupations. Both gay men and lesbians are more likely to be self-employed in natural and applied sciences and arts, culture, recreation and sport occupations. Gay men are also much more likely than heterosexual men to be self-employed in sales and services occupations, while lesbians are more likely to be self-employed in health related occupations than heterosexual women. Having children and being married are significant predictors of self-employment for heterosexuals but not gay men or lesbians. Preliminary analysis of wage and self-employment incomes suggest that gay men may ameliorate some wage disadvantage through self-employment.

Authors

• Sean Waite, McGill University

• Nicole Genevieve Denier, McGill University