Ian Burn, University of Liverpool

Transgender people who experience incongruence between their birth sex and gender identity can receive medical treatment to alleviate the distress. This small but growing group has received little attention in economics, and we investigate the effect of gender-affirming care on labor market outcomes in Sweden. Using administrative data on the full Swedish population from 2006 to 2020, we estimate the average effects of initiating gender-affirming care using an event study combined with a matching algorithm generating a comparable sample of transgender and non-transgender (cis). The key to our contribution is capturing the multifaceted gender-affirming care process, starting with a diagnosis and including various medical treatments and legal changes of gender. For trans men, the labor market changes begin earlier in the process than for trans women. We find that trans men's labor market situation improves after initiating a gender transition. In contrast, the labor market outcomes of trans women deteriorate, and the negative effects are common to all trans women regardless of their personal characteristics. The effects for trans men are a matter of economic status before gender-affirming care. Trans men who have employment and high earnings stay in employment and increase their earnings, while for less affluent trans men, employment declines and their earnings decrease. The package of treatments that make up gender-affirming care are correlated with different trajectories of labor market outcomes. Gender affirming care for trans men appears to allow those who begin treatment with worse outcomes to catch up to their peers over time. For trans women, we see similar effects for most groups, but those who do not receive surgery or legal gender recognition have more negative trajectories than their peers.

DATE: Wednesday, April 2, 2025

TIME: 3:30-5:00 p.m.

LOCATION: Fronczak 444