LGBT students: New evidence on demographics and educational outcomes

Abstract

This paper shows that LGBT students in the U.S. are less likely to graduate from high school and attend college. These differences persist after controlling for demographic characteristics, family background, state and school fixed effects. Relatedly, LGBT students have lower educational expectations, a lower sense of school belonging, and are more likely to have been affected by discrimination.

Introduction

The aim of this study is to provide new important descriptive statistics on LGBT students. By leveraging novel information contained in the restricted-use version of the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), this paper investigates whether LGBT students are more or less likely to complete high school or attend college, and whether they have higher or lower performance while in school.

In order to understand whether or not sexual minorities are a vulnerable sub-population that needs to be supported, policymakers need to know whether LGBT individuals are under-represented in secondary or tertiary education, whether they face specific challenges, and the key factors associated with their educational success. Without such data, policies may be driven by anecdotal evidence and the current political mood, or policymakers may believe that the invisibility of the LGBT population implies that these students do not require any specific intervention.

Within economics, the only published paper on LGB students is by Carpenter (2009). He shows that gays have higher GPA in college; while bisexual females spend less time studying. Even in other social sciences, the evidence is scarce and mainly derived from health surveys (Pearson & Wilkinson, 2017). This paper makes three main contributions to this literature. First and foremost, even if researchers have recently started to analyze labor market outcomes for trans individuals (Geijtenbeek & Plug, 2018), this is the first study to include any nationally representative statistics on trans students’ educational outcomes.

Second, this analysis is based on recent data: the HSLS:09 surveys have been conducted between 2009 and 2016. Most of the previous analyses rely instead on data such as the Add Health containing information on individuals who attended high school in the 1990s. Especially after the decriminalization of homosexuality in 2003 (Lawrence v. Texas), and the progressive legalization of same-sex marriage between 2004 and 2015, the experiences of the LGBT individuals interviewed in the HSLS:09 might have been different due to improvements in social norms and attitudes towards the LGBT community (Flores & Barclay, 2016; Kenny & Patel, 2017; Kreitzer, Hamilton, & Tolbert, 2014; Sansone, 2018; Tankard & Paluck, 2017).

Third, while other surveys focus on adolescent health and health behavior, the HSLS:09 provides an extremely rich set of educational variables relevant for this analysis. For instance, this dataset includes test scores such as the SAT, PSAT and ACT, information on students’ and parents’ educational expectation and aspirations, measures of school identity and discrimination, details on respondents’ college performance, and the main reason behind their decision not to attend college.

This paper shows that LGBT students have poorer educational outcomes: even if they do not perform worse than their peers in several tests such as the SAT, they are less likely to graduate from high school, have lower GPA, and accumulate fewer credits while in school. Furthermore, these students are less likely to apply and attend college. These gaps persist – especially for non-heterosexual students – after controlling for demographic characteristics, family background, state and school fixed effects.

In line with these results, this study shows that LGBT students have lower educational expectations, lower motivation, school engagement and sense of belonging. In addition, these students believe that discrimination has impacted them both while in school and in the workplace. Therefore, future policies should ensure that students with similar ability have the same opportunities and can achieve the same educational outcomes irrespectively of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The findings in this paper are in contrast with previous studies highlighting higher educational achievements among LGBT adults (Black, Sanders, & Taylor, 2007). This could be due to the fact that some (highly educated) individuals start to identify as LGBT only in adulthood. It could also be that, despite the initial low academic performance in high school, LGBT students quickly catch-up once they live in a more welcoming environment such as a college campus. Another alternative explanation is that low-educated people were less likely to disclose their sexual behavior or relationship status in the past decades. Indeed, Millennials are much more willing to identify as LGBT than older generations (Newport, 2018). In line with this hypothesis, Sansone (2018) found a lower prevalence of individuals without tertiary education among self-reported same-sex couples before the introduction of marriage equality in the U.S.