Census Study of Gay Married Couples Finds Similarities to Husband-and-Wife Couples
By Mike Swift
Mercury News
June 17, 2009

Marriage — whether you are gay or straight — may be the great common denominator among American households, according to a new government study that offers a first-ever look at the nation's same-sex couples who say they are spouses.

Married men and women average about 50 years old, and about four in 10 have kids living at home. The average couple pulls down a little over $90,000 a year and four in five own their home.

That demographic portrait doesn't just fit the nation's 56 million husband-and-wife couples. It also closely fits the roughly 340,000 households where two men call themselves husbands, or two women consider themselves wives.

In the midst of the nation's widening debate over Related sections whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, the U.S. Census Bureau has quietly completed a statistical portrait of U.S. lesbian and gay couples who describe themselves as married. With same-sex marriage likely to be legal in as many as six states by Jan. 1, the study could add another layer to the debate.

Many of those gay and lesbian couples live in states where they cannot legally marry, and may be checking the spouse box on their census form to reflect a domestic partnership, a civil union or partnership where two lives have been merged into one household. About 36,000 of those couples — 11 percent of the nation's total — live in California, the only state where some same-sex couples hold a valid marriage license, Advertisement Quantcast but where a constitutional ban also prohibits new marriages.

On Wednesday, thousands of gay and lesbian couples celebrated the anniversary Wednesday of the first same-sex marriages across California, but no one knows even now exactly how many same-sex couples wed before the Proposition 8 ban went into effect.

One reason for that lack of data is that the Census Bureau edits the responses of same-sex couples who say they are living with a "husband" or "wife." The bureau reports their data with couples who check the "unmarried partner" box. Gay rights groups want the federal agency to change that policy for the 2010 Census.

"Certainly, our relationships should be treated the same as everyone else's," said Cary Davidson, president of gay rights group Equality California. "For those of us who are married, we would like to be counted as married."

The most common estimate is that 18,000 same-sex couples married in California last year, although the Census Bureau's top family demographer said that estimate could be too high. The California demographer who produced the number says, however, that the estimate is conservative.

Whatever the number, California's legally married same-sex couples remain statistically invisible, rolled into the state's 105,000 same-sex "unmarried partner" households.

Members of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force have been meeting with the Obama administration over the issue. On Wednesday, the administration extended limited job benefits to gay partners of federal workers, and President Barack Obama said he would work to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

"I think the signs are good from Commerce (Department) that this policy is going to be reversed," said Jamie Grant, director of the Policy Institute at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

One argument they may be able to use for the policy change is that same-sex couples who check "husband" or "wife" on a census form appear to be a very different demographic group than couples who check "unmarried partner," according to the new census study.

Those "married" couples tended to be older and have lower incomes, but were more likely to have children and own their home, than same-sex couples who checked "unmarried partner." In terms of education, homeownership, children and income, the same-sex "married" couples more closely resembled heterosexual husbands and wives.

Martin O'Connell, chief of the Census Bureau's Fertility and Family Statistics Branch, said the agency decided to dig into its unpublished internal files after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May 2008.

"We saw it was going to be a pretty important issue," O'Connell said.

O'Connell defended editing the census responses of same-sex couples where gay marriage isn't legal.

"What if you fill out the form to say you are my sister?" O'Connell said in a conversation with a male reporter. "Does that make you my sister? No, you're not my sister. "... People have to ask what is the responsibility of the Census Bureau to provide data that people have confidence in."

The bureau says it is also bound by federal law. And changing the definition of marriage would have statistical ramifications throughout the federal government.

Gary Gates, a demographer with the Williams Institute at the UCLA law school and an expert on gay and lesbian demographics, compared the number of California marriages on the same dates in 2007 with the number in 2008 to produce the estimate that there were 18,000 same-sex marriages last year.

But O'Connell checked that methodology against records in Massachusetts, which does count same-sex married couples. He said that methodology could have inflated the number of married couples by a third.

Gates said his estimate is conservative, because the worsening economy potentially would have caused fewer Californians to marry in 2008, strongly suggesting the spike in marriages starting June 17 was due to same-sex couples.

Both demographers agree that with state marriage laws changing so rapidly, better data is needed. "Not all of these can be legally married same-sex couples — there are too many of them," Gates said of the census study. "They are capturing, in essence, a socially constructed term, more than a legally constructed term."