Sexual identity & wellbeing: Gender is found to play a significant role only for homosexuals; lesbians tend to be happier than heterosexuals; bisexuals of any gender are the least satisfied with life of all sexual groups

Sexual identity and wellbeing: A distributional analysis. Samuel Mann, David Blackby, Nigel O’Leary. Economics Letters, May 13 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2019.04.023

Highlights
•    Heterosexual and sexual minority wellbeing gaps differ across sexual identities.
•    The effect on wellbeing of being a sexual minority differs across the distribution.
•    Gender is found to play a significant role only for homosexuals.
•    Lesbians tend to be happier than their heterosexual counterparts.
•    Bisexuals are the least satisfied with life of all sexual groups.

Abstract: The relationship between sexual identity and wellbeing is analysed in an unconditional panel quantile setting. There is heterogeneity across sexual identity and gender for homosexuals and, for all but lesbians, sexual minorities are less satisfied than heterosexuals below the median of the wellbeing distribution. Meanwhile, bisexuals of any gender are the least satisfied of any sexual group, and this is apparent across the entire wellbeing distribution. In contrast, the happiest individuals who report an ‘other’ sexual orientation are happier than the happiest heterosexuals.