Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

First Advisor

Monica Das

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide empirical evidence on the differentials between race and sexual orientations in the distribution of income/salary and the amount or public assistance received. Using data from the U.S. Census from 2013-2017, I explore different alternatives for the sexual orientation wage gap: human capital differences, industry choice, numbers of hours worker per week and other labour market decisions. Depending on the outcome, I find that people of colour face primarily face a wage penalty. White workers face a wage advantage. However, the extent of the gap is dependent on the individual's gender, racial and sexual orientation combination. To provide additional explanation, I use the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition to examine the distributions between each racial and sexual group. The results show that there is a definite wage gap between racial and sexual orientation groups, while workers of colour face the highest unexplained portions of that gap.

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