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UCLA’s Williams Project Releases New Report on Diversity Among California’s Same-sex Couples

February 16, 2006

Media Contacts:
Gary J. Gates, (310) 825-1868, gates@law.ucla.edu
Holning Lau, (310) 206-5782, lau@law.ucla.edu

Today, the Williams Project at the UCLA School of Law released a new analysis of Census 2000 data showing that California’s same-sex couples and their children reflect California’s racial and ethnic diversity.  Among Californians in same-sex couples, approximately four out of every ten are racial/ethnic minorities.  Among same-sex parents’ own children, over two-thirds are racial/ethnic minorities.

The new report, Race and Ethnicity of Same-sex Couples in California, shows that same-sex couples do not constitute a monolithic socio-economic category.  Disparity in the income, employment, educational attainment, and home ownership of persons in same-sex couples is strongly associated with race and ethnicity.  In addition, minority same-sex couples tend to live where there are high concentrations of the couples’ respective race/ethnicity.

Same-sex couples that are racial/ethnic minorities are much more likely than their white counterparts to be raising their own children.  These same-sex minority parents tend to be poorer than their white counterparts.  Broken down by race/ethnicity, the mean household incomes of same-sex parents are as follows: white-$95,551, Asian/Pacific Islander-$67,209, black-$57,640, Latino/a-$46,264.

Gary J. Gates, Senior Research Fellow at the Williams Project and co-author of the report said, “Many minority same-sex couples, particularly those with children, are economically vulnerable, especially as they lack the support and protections that marriage provides to other California families.”

The full text of the Williams Project report can be accessed at http://www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute.  The report is the fourth of four studies on the racial/ethnic composition of California’s same-sex couples.  The first three studies specifically addressed Asian/Pacific Islanders, Latino/as, and blacks, respectively.  This series of reports was made possible through a generous grant by the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Foundation.