Topic: Decriminalization of Homosexuality and Sex Ratio

Speaker:Simon Chang

Affiliation: Central University of Finance and Economics and IZA

Time:Tuesday, 23 Sept. 14:00-15:30pm

Location:Room 217, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract：

Sexual activity between consenting adults of the same sex is still illegal, at leastde jure, in more than one third of the countries in the world despite a global wave of decriminalization in the second-half of the twentieth century. Among other distinctions, these countries tend to have higher population sex ratio, i.e. number of men per women, than others. On the contrary, countries that used to have anti-homosexuality laws tend to have lower sex ratio when they repealed the laws. This paper proposes a theory to argue that a high sex ratio creates a hostile social environment against homosexuality, which in turn is conducive to the retaining of anti-homosexuality laws. Empirically, I first show evidence on that individual attitudes toward homosexuality across countries are negatively affected by sex ratio. Second, regressions using country-level data reveal that criminalization of homosexuality is positively associated with sex ratio after controlling for various country characteristics. In particular, such correlation appears to be stronger in democratic countries, where laws are more likely to reflect the preferences of citizens. To deal with potential endogeneity issues, I apply the instrumental variable approach to the country-level data and the fixed effect model to a state-level longitudinal data set in the U.S. The conclusions remain the same.

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