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Gay men earn 10% more than straight counterparts with similar qualifications

Kitt Carpenter is a professor of economics at Vanderbilt University who himself authored the study, but expressed surprise, saying We double- and triple-checked the dataset for other patterns that would indicate some fundamental error or data problem. We found none.

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Prior to this study, the case used to be the opposite, and the sudden change in the situation has surprised experts.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Professor Kitt Carpenter explained that, "We subjected the gay male earnings premium to a host of extra tests to see if we could make the result go away. We could not."

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However, the study could not find any sufficient basis for the turn of events. Professor Kitt Carpenter could only guess more acceptance for LGBT community and more gay men heading families as plausible reasons for the change in trend.

He said "A gay male couple who gets married may have one partner select out of the workforce to focus on caregiving responsibilities; this might make the other partner more productive at work, resulting in relative improvements in gay men's earnings relative to those of straight men."

The economic professor added that "If the relatively lower earning partner systematically selects out of the labor market, this productivity effect would be compounded by a compositional change in the sample of relatively higher earning gay men we observe working."

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