Recently, a friend of mine suggested that I read Super Freakonomics because of the section concerning transsexuals that he said reminded him of me. Interestingly, I have not seen this friend since late summer 1969. In fact, until somehow we connected on a social networking site a few years ago, we have had no contact in those intervening years. After I told him of my circumstances, he said he waited all these years just to reestablish a friendship, just to find out that everything had changed.  He really has taken it very well, considering that we were roommates those 40 years ago.  Wow, 40 years.  Man, is my friend old or what?

I found the passage in Super Freakonomics very interesting.  However, in a way it relates to my many posts concerning misleading statistical analysis. As usual, the authors hve experience and education far beyond mine. They are noted scholars and authors. However, in this case they do fairly shoddy work. Considering how much and how frequently he discusses other peoples misuse of statistics I found this disturbing.

In the passage, the authors are trying to determine if there really is an earnings gap between men and women that is not explained by something not related to gender, such as women take maternity leave, lack of role models and mentors, etc. etc. etc. They state that the best way to determine this is to turn men into women and women and men and see what happens. Although, as they realize, this is not physically nor politically feasible, there is a small subset of the population that do this to themselves. They go on to say that studying the earnings of transsexuals pre-and post-op will supply the answer to this question. In a perfect world I would agree with them. But as we all know this world is far from perfect. The problem with trying to measure the wage discrimination against women by comparing it with the earnings of post-op transsexuals is that what you are really comparing is the wage discrimination against women with the wage discrimination against transsexuals.  If they honestly think that there is no discrimination against trans-people, they shouldn't be writing books that are universally praised.  In fact, in most locales, discrimination against trans-people is totally legal.  We have no protections according to the law in most states.

As economists, the authors failed to take into consideration the most basic of economic concepts: the law of supply and demand. For you see, life pre-and postop, is dramatically different for the transsexual. As an example, I can tell you from experience, that I just do not fit into a construction environment. I have experience as a jobsite accountant in construction. Yet, at the few interviews I had for construction companies, I could see the look in the hiring managers eyes when I entered. So with fewer options I had to pay a price to get a job;  That price being lower wages.

I am willing to work for a higher salary, however, if anyone is interested.