Non-Binary Gender Economics

Coffman, Katherine, Lucas Coffman, and Keith Ericson. 2024. “Non-Binary Gender Economics.” NBER Working Paper 32222.

Abstract:

Economics research has largely overlooked non-binary individuals. We aim to jump-start the literature by providing data on several economically-important beliefs and preferences. Among many results, non-binary individuals report more gender-based discrimination and express different career and life aspirations, including less desire for children. Anti-non-binary sentiment is stronger than anti-LGBT sentiment, and strongest among men. Non-binary respondents report lower assertiveness than men and women, and their social preferences are similar to men’s and less prosocial than women’s, with age an important moderator. Elicited beliefs reveal inaccurate stereotypes as people often mistake the direction of group differences or exaggerate their size.

General Interest Summary:

A large economics literature has explored gender differences across an array of economically important contexts, particularly in the workplace. However, this work has almost exclusively used a binary notion of gender– comparing men and women– leaving us with limited data on gender minority populations. The absence of data on gender minorities is meaningful: More than one million individuals in the United States identify as gender non-binary or genderqueer.

We aim to jump-start the study of non-binary gender in economics. We provide novel results about the non-binary population in economically meaningful contexts. We measure preferences across various categories: classic economic preferences (risk and time), social preferences (altruism, trust, reciprocity, and deception), and self-confidence and self-assertion. Further, to better understand stereotypes, we measure beliefs of what those preferences look like for each group; e.g. how do you think the non-binary respondents answered the question about trust?

Our key results include:

• Gender, masculinity, femininity: Gender identity is more important to non-binary respondents than it is to men and about the same as it is to women. Non-binary respondents typically report non-extreme values of masculinity or femininity, and as a result, fall between men and women on average. Most non-binary respondents use the pronouns “they/them/theirs”.
• Anti-non-binary sentiment: The modal response among men and women, across various professional and social contexts, is zero discomfort with non-binary individuals; however, roughly half report some discomfort. As a benchmark, men and women report more discomfort with non-binary individuals across contexts than with LGBT individuals. On average men and women tend to agree with the existence of non-binary gender in humans; however, the distribution is bimodal, with the most common response “strong agreement” (30%) and the second most common response “strong disagreement” (15%). Women generally perceive non-binary individuals more favorably than men do, expressing less discomfort and being more likely to believe non-binary identities exist.
• Experienced discrimination: Non-binary individuals report experiencing more discrimination based on their gender than do men or women across a variety of situations: at school, in medical settings, in public, in court or with police, and online. The exception is at work, where non-binary individuals and women report similar levels of experienced discrimination. In contrast, men and women believe that non-binary individuals are discriminated against about as much as women are.
• Life and career aspirations: Relative to men and women, non-binary individuals are more likely to want to help their community and are less motivated by money. They are less likely to want to work with people. Finally, non-binary individuals are substantially less likely to want to have children than either men or women.
• Self-assertion: Non-binary respondents report lower self-assertion than both men and women. We measure self-assertion as an index of competitiveness, generalized self-efficacy, willingness to negotiate, and the unwillingness to take on non-promotable tasks. In terms of magnitudes, the difference between non-binary individuals and men and women (averaged) is about the same as the difference between women and men. Some of these differences can be explained by the younger age of non-binary respondents. However, even conditional on age, non-binary respondents report significantly less competitiveness than men or women.
• Confidence and stereotyping: Non-binary respondents, like women, under-estimate their performance more in a male-typed domain than in a female-typed domain, while this pattern is reversed for men.  Self-reported masculinity and femininity predict how the self-confidence of respondents varies with the gender stereotype of the domain. Further, individuals stereotype women and non-binary participants as likely to perform better in a female-typed domain and worse in a male-typed domain, exaggerating true differences.
• Social preferences: Women report the highest levels of willingness to give, regard for others, and positive reciprocity, as well as the lowest negative reciprocity, trust, and willingness to lie. In some dimensions, non-binary respondents’ reports are, on average, similar to women’s, and in other dimensions, they are more similar to men’s; age is an important factor in understanding these gaps in social preferences. Respondents hold accurate, though exaggerated beliefs about men-women differences in social preferences; however, beliefs are more inaccurate with respect to non-binary individuals.
• Classical economic preferences: Non-binary individuals report more impatience than either men or women, but are in-between men and women in terms of risk tolerance. These patterns are not well-anticipated by others.

While social scientists have uncovered a variety of ways in which individual differences in beliefs and preferences can help to explain gender gaps in labor market outcomes, this work has largely been restricted to comparing women and men. Our results suggest that these same measures may be important in understanding gaps between non-binary individuals and others in terms of educational and workplace outcomes.