Social acceptance of same-sex couples is a primary driver of high-skilled 'brain drain' between cities.
March 31, 2026
Original Paper
Acceptance of Same-Sex Couples and Their Location Choices
SSRN · 6495771
The Takeaway
While we assume workers move primarily for jobs or taxes, this research shows that for college-educated individuals, local social tolerance is a decisive factor in location choice. Cities that are less inclusive don't just lose a specific demographic; they systematically drain their high-skilled human capital, leading to measurable drops in local economic productivity.
From the abstract
This paper shows that social acceptance of same-sex couples affects their location decisions, especially those with college degrees. Mean utilities of each city are derived from a conditional logit model, separately for same-sex and different-sex couples with and without college degrees. I estimate how mean utility varies with acceptance for each group. To deal with endogeneity, I use a novel instrument based on the historical number of churches. The results show that acceptance has a substantia