Study Compares Situations Of Same-Sex, Married Couples
The New York Sun
By Grace Rauh
August 27, 2008

New York City is home to the largest number of same-sex couples found in any city in America.

Among the nearly 26,000 couples, 62% live outside of Manhattan, and 15% are raising children, compared with 50% of married couples, according to a report released yesterday by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The study compared same-sex couples to married couples, and found that families headed by same-sex couples have a lower average household income, with same-sex couples on Staten Island earning an average of 36% less than their married counterparts and same-sex couples in Brooklyn earning an average of 7% less.

Same-sex couples also are less likely to own their own home than married couples in every borough with the exception of Manhattan, according to the study, which is based on an analysis of data from the 2000 Census.

In Manhattan, same-sex male couples outnumbered female couples by a three-to-one margin, while same-sex female couples outnumbered same-sex male couples in Brooklyn and in the Bronx. A comparison of same-sex couples based on gender was fairly even in Queens and Staten Island.

Los Angeles is home to the second highest number of same-sex couples, with just more than 12,000 living in the city, and Chicago came in third with 9,412 same-sex couples.

The executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, Alan Van Capelle, said in a statement that the Census snapshot sheds valuable light on the city's same-sex couples and the 8,400 children the study estimated that they are parenting. He said the study makes clear that the protections that come with marriage are needed by the city's same-sex families, noting that because same-sex couples with children earn less income, on average, than married couples, "one emergency could mean disaster for one of these families simply because they don't have access to the protections the state provides to married families to help them weather a storm."

Mr. Van Capelle said state legislators making up their minds on the question of same-sex marriage need to look at this data.