The Educational Premium of LGB Students in Context: Mechanisms and Change across Two UK Birth Cohorts

Anna Caprinali , University of Trento
Diederik Boertien, Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics (CED)

While prior research consistently identified an educational premium among older generations of LGB individuals, recent evidence uncovered variations by gender, identities, contexts, and cohorts. This study investigates how the relationship between sexual identity and education has evolved over time in the UK and aims to explain variations in this premium by contextualizing the mechanisms outlined in previous literature. Using data from Understanding Society, we found support for a stable educational premium over time for gay men and a decreasing one for lesbian women. Subsequently, we used two birth cohort studies (BCS70 and Next Steps) to gain insight into how the school, family and individual context during adolescence changed across cohorts and may have affected the attainment of various groups differently. Based on these observations, we suggest that the diminishing educational premium among lesbian women could be linked to increased visibility combined with the persistence of traditional gender norms.

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 Presented in Session P3. Migration, Economics, Policies, History