US economist Lee Badgett shows the costs of homophobia
Economist has made a career debunking myths about homosexuals, and showing that intolerance of gay people also puts a brake on growth
Economist Professor Lee Badgett says equal treatment for gays and lesbians can benefit economies the world over. For the past two decades, she's mined data in her quest to prove it.
"My long-run goal has always been the same; it's using research to help create a more just world," said Badgett, 54, director of the Centre for Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts in the United States. "When policymakers can pick out their favourite myth about gay people to hang their policy on, it's pretty hard to argue against."
Policymakers can pick out their favourite myth about gay people
The World Bank is collaborating with Badgett to analyse homophobia as a hurdle to development in emerging markets.
She's been called as an expert witness before congressional subcommittees in the United States, and in a court case that found California's same-sex-marriage ban unconstitutional. Colleagues credit her with publishing the first research tackling gay and lesbian issues as economic rather than sociological.
"Lee was absolutely a pioneer," said Dr Gary Gates, a research fellow with the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, which focuses on sexual orientation and gender-identity law and public policy. "There was no one in economics who was really thinking about these issues."
