‘Escape’ from Home? The Moderating Role of Sexual Orientation on the Association Between Social Origin and Educational Attainment.

Previous research has documented that sexual orientation relates to educational attainment, and that it might do so differently for men and women. In this paper, we investigate to what extent sexual orientation moderates the relationship between social origin and educational attainment and whether the educational premium among LGB people might be concentrated among individuals from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. We propose, elaborate, and provide a theoretical underpinning for the ‘Queer Habitus’ hypothesis which states that having an LGB identity can lead to weaker family-of-origin ties and disrupt people’s class habitus. These factors can lead LGB people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to pursue higher levels of education as compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Empirically, the paper takes advantage of the oversampling of LGB individuals in the 2019 wave of the nationally representative probability-based German Socio-Economic Panel study (SOEP; N = 15,746; LGB = 589). The findings challenge the idea that educational premiums are limited to gay men by showing that both LGB men and LGB women have higher educational attainment than their straight counterparts in Germany. Further, this educational ‘advantage’ is moderated by social origin. The higher education of LGB people is concentrated among those with disadvantaged social origin compared to straight individuals from similar social backgrounds. Overall, this lends support to the ‘Queer Habitus’ hypothesis which argues that the disruption of the heterosexual habitus by an LGB identity causes a weaker association of the social origin on educational attainment.