The gender gap in pay between men and women is well known. Much less is known about the gender gap (if any) between cisgender men and women, and gender diverse people. However, this new article by Christopher Carpenter (Vanderbilt University) and co-authors, published in the journal Economics Letters (open access, with non-technical summary here), gives us a starting point using novel data from New Zealand. Carpenter et al. make use of Stats NZ's Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI), which links various administrative datasets. Specifically:
We use NZ Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) birth records to identify birth record sex, which only allow two options: ‘male’ or ‘female’. Next, we link DIA birth records with the NZTA Driver License Register and restrict our sample to individuals who had their driver license registration/renewal in 2021 or after when the NZTA driver license application allowed identification of men, women, and gender diverse people... We compare driver license gender with birth record sex to identify cisgender people (those whose birth record sex matches their driver license recorded gender), transgender people (those whose birth record sex does not match their driver license register gender and whose driver license register gender is either male or female), and gender diverse people (those whose driver license register gender indicates gender diverse).
This is a really smart approach to identifying gender diverse and transgender individuals in the administrative data. It will tend towards false negatives, because not everyone has a driver's licence, and not every gender diverse or transgender person will change their gender on the driver's licence. However, Carpenter et al. are up front about the measurement error that this creates.
Carpenter et al. then look at demographic and other characteristics and at labour market outcomes by gender, comparing transgender and gender diverse people with cisgender people, focusing on whether each person is NEET (not in employment, education, or training), and their taxable income reported to Inland Revenue. In terms of demographics, they find that:
...relative to cisgender women, transgender men are younger, less likely to be of European descent, less likely to be married or in a civil union, less likely to have children, more likely to live in Auckland or Wellington, less likely to have a tertiary qualification, and more likely to have a mental health prescription... gender diverse individuals whose birth record sex is female... are younger, less likely to be married, less likely to have had any children, more likely to have a mental health prescription, and more likely to be NEET than both transgender men and cisgender women. Regarding education, gender diverse individuals whose birth record sex is female are more likely than transgender men but less likely than cisgender women to have a tertiary qualification...
Relative to cisgender men, transgender women are younger, less likely to be of European descent, less likely to be married or in a civil union, less likely to have children, more likely to live in Auckland or Wellington, and more likely to have a mental health prescription than cisgender men... gender diverse individuals whose birth record sex is male... are younger, more likely to have tertiary education, and more likely to have a mental health prescription than both transgender women and cisgender men. Gender diverse individuals whose birth record sex is male are much more similar to transgender women than they are to cisgender men with respect to marital status, presence of children, and residence in Auckland or Wellington.
Interesting stuff, although superseded by data coming out of the 2023 Census, which for the first time collected comprehensive data on gender and sexual identity (more on that in a moment). Turning to labour market outcomes, Carpenter et al. find:
...strong evidence that gender minorities in New Zealand are much more likely to be NEET than otherwise similar cisgender people. We estimate that transgender women, gender diverse individuals whose birth record sex is male, and gender diverse individuals whose birth record sex is female are 10–12 percentage points more likely to be NEET than similarly situated cisgender men...
Turning to earnings... we again find that gender minorities earn significantly less than cisgender men with similar observable characteristics. Here, however, the differences for cisgender women – which indicate precise earnings gaps of about 33 % – are similar in magnitude to those estimated for transgender women and transgender men. In contrast, gender diverse individuals whose birth record sex is male and gender diverse individuals whose birth record sex is female both experience significantly larger earnings gaps compared to both cisgender men and cisgender women.
Those earnings gaps for gender diverse people are both over 50 percent. I don't think anyone will be particularly surprised by these results. It has long been suspected that gender diverse people face an earnings penalty, but there has been a lack of data to support this. However, the novel approach by Carpenter et al. has helped to fill in that particular research gap. The next step though, surely, must be to take advantage of the 2023 Census data, which gives much more detail on gender and sexual identity, with what is likely to be far less measurement error. According to the public Stats NZ data, there were over 17,000 people who were 'another gender' (other than male or female) in the 2023 Census (you can find this by browsing Aotearoa Data Explorer for 2023 Census data on gender). However, to disaggregate between different non-binary genders from there requires access to the data in the IDI. It will be interesting to see when the first analyses of that data come out. I'm very sure someone will be looking at it already.
No comments:
Post a Comment