Better off by Law? The Association Between a Constitutional Reform and the Subjective Well-Being of the LGBT Community

While several authors have reported that attitudes towards the LGBT community have not changed in Latin America for a number of decades, there is little-to-no statistical evidence of how (and if) political reforms towards inclusion have been effective. This study provides quantitative evidence of how an Ecuadorian legal reform that decriminalized homosexuality and a subsequent Constitutional amendment failed to improve the well-being and discrimination perceptions of a sample of LGBT individuals. Moreover, while assessing the consistency of our measures and testing the robustness of our results, we find discrimination perceptions to be significantly associated to lower well-being rates. All of this suggests that there was no effect of the reforms, neither directly on subjective well-being rates nor indirectly through lower perceived discrimination. Overall, our results are indicative of a case where laws were changed, but not institutions.