Gender Identity and Economic Decision Making
Economic research on gender gaps has focused on the familiar binary categories of 'men' and 'women'. In a new project, Anne Brenøe and her co-authors asked: What if that is only part of the story?
Using data from over 8,000 participants, they explored whether a self-reported, continuous measure of gender identity—how masculine or feminine individuals feel—can help to better understand economic behavior and outcomes. This measure, called Continuous Gender Identity (CGI), is strongly associated with economic preferences, education, and labor market outcomes—even after accounting for binary gender. One striking finding is that CGI is especially predictive for men. In other words, the measure provides new insights that traditional categories alone do not capture.
The results suggest that incorporating how people perceive and express their gender identity can enrich economic research and open new pathways to understanding persistent inequalities. As debates around gender become more nuanced, this study offers an important step forward in how economics can reflect that complexity.
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