Denmark’s entire population of cohabiting same-sex couples—identified through shared financial commitments—will be tracked over time to reveal how sexuality shapes income, health, and career choices across generations. Most studies of sexual minorities rely on small, non-representative surveys or snapshots that cannot follow people through life. This project overcomes that by using Danish administrative data covering every cohabiting couple in the country. It asks three specific questions: whether sexual orientation affects intergenerational mobility (do children of same-sex parents have different income or health outcomes?), whether sexual minorities avoid certain workplaces with hostile cultures, and what the demographic profile of this population actually looks like when measured comprehensively. If successful, the research could give policymakers and employers concrete evidence on where discrimination or self-selection distorts labour markets and family outcomes. For example, if sexual minorities systematically accept lower wages to avoid toxic firms, that is a measurable cost to both individuals and the economy. The findings could inform workplace diversity policies, anti-discrimination law, and how schools or social services support families with same-sex parents. The project is applied social science with direct relevance to economic policy and equality legislation.
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Sexual identity forms the cornerstone for many choices and outcomes in life. Your choice of partner, of course, depends on your sexuality, but what about other relationships? If sexual identity influences parent-child relationships, intergenerational mobility in terms of income and health could also be affected. If sexual minorities anticipate discrimination from firms and co-workers in certain fields, do they then choose different career paths? These are all crucial questions if we want to understand and improve wellbeing and life trajectories of sexual minorities; an improvement that would have a significant, positive impact on aggregate economic outcomes (Badgett 2020). To provide robust answers, we need unprecedentedly comprehensive data on sexual minorities and their outcomes. Same-sex cohabiting couples can be identified in surveys, but typically not in datasets that cover entire populations across time. Uniquely, we can identify the full Danish population of cohabiting couples using data on individuals’ financial commitments. By doing so, we overcome issues related to non-representative surveys and cross-sectional data on same-sex couples. These data can be used in a wide range of studies on sexual minorities. As a start, we suggest three projects that exploit our population-level panel data to provide novel insights into the wellbeing, labour market outcomes, and life trajectories of sexual minorities. First, as Danish administrative data include multitudinous demographic characteristics, we can conduct the hitherto most rigorous demographic analysis of any sexual minority population. Demographic analyses of sexual minorities already exist, but they tend suffer from a lack of representative data and the inability to follow individuals over time. Second, we want to understand if sexuality affects the relationship between parent and child outcomes, i.e. levels of intergenerational mobility. The existing literature on intergenerational mobility tends to focus on the effect of institutions in improving intergenerational mobility (e.g. schools). Our focus on sexuality allows us to examine the role of norms and identity in intergenerational mobility. Third, we uncover if sexual minorities tend to sort into certain types of firms, and why they may do so. Firm-specific cultures may affect workers’ wellbeing and health. We expect that sexual minorities are willing to pay a relatively higher price (i.e. by working at a lower wage level) to avoid particularly “toxic” firms. This is relevant for both policymakers and employers who want retain minority workers. Throughout the project, we will build on a network of relevant stakeholders: policymakers, employers, LGBTQIA+ rights organisations, and other relevant academics. We will engage in conversations and discuss research findings with these stakeholders. This is essential to promote our research agenda, to get feedback on our results, and to increase the impact of our results.
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