What Same-Sex Adoption Laws Can Tell Us About the Gender Wage Gap in the United States

Abstract

Gender wage gaps are frequently explained as resulting from direct discrimination, employers’ preferences over personality traits, and differing labor force attachment. We rely on a natural quasi-experiment using exogenous changes in state-level, same-sex adoption laws to distinguish between the competing explanations of the gender wage gap. Estimates from a differences-in-differences model show the wage gap between lesbians and heterosexual women shrank or inverted in those states which legalized adoption by same-sex couples. The wage gap did not change for men. This supports the parenthood hypothesis as a viable explanation for a portion of the gender wage gap.