Eva Ranehill

Professor

Gender Identity and Economic Decision Making

Author

Anne Ardila Brenøe
Zeynep Eyibak
Lea Heursen
Eva Ranehill
Roberto A. Weber

Summary, in English

Economic research on gender gaps in preferences and economic outcomes has focused on variation with respect to sex—a binary classification as either a “man”
or “woman.” We validate a novel and simple measure of self-reported continuous
gender identity (CGI) and explore whether gender identity correlates with variation
in economic decisions and outcomes beyond the relationship with binary sex.
We use four datasets (N=8,073) measuring various dimensions of economic preferences and educational and labor market outcomes for which prior research has
documented gaps between men and women. Our analysis rejects the null hypothesis
that CGI has no relationship with behaviors and preferences beyond the
relationship with binary sex, particularly for men, and suggests that incorporating
self-reported measures of gender identity may have value for understanding gender
gaps and for targeting policy. However, when considering specific domains, the
relationships vary in statistical significance and are often small.

Department/s