Continuous Gender Identity and Economic Decision Making
Economic research on gender gaps in preferences and economic outcomes has identified gaps with respect to sex—a binary classification as either a “man” or “woman.” We investigate the value of incorporating a continuous measure of self-reported gender identity into economics by exploring whether gender identity correlates with variation in economic decisions and outcomes beyond the explanatory power of binary sex. We rely on a validated novel and simple measure of continuous gender identity (CGI) that correlates with measures used in gender research outside economics. We employ this validated measure in four novel datasets (N=4,507) measuring several dimensions of economic preferences and educational and labor-market outcomes. We that CGI has limited explanatory power, beyond sex, for most economic preferences or outcomes. We find relationships for a select number of unincentivized preference measures and for self-reported outcomes associated with gender stereotypes.