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New Study Finds New Mexico Will Gain Up to $2 Million Annually from Same-Sex Marriage Media Contact: March 23, 2006 Same-sex marriage will have a positive impact on New Mexico’s state budget, a potential gain of $1.5 million to $2 million annually, according to a study released today by the Williams Institute, a think tank at the UCLA School of Law. Savings in means-tested public benefits programs and an increase in tax revenue from same-sex weddings and wedding-related tourism account for the windfall for New Mexico’s budget. “This study comes to the same conclusion as at least ten other studies conducted over the last decade,” said Brad Sears, co-author of the study and executive director of UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute. In addition to a series of studies by the Williams Institute, similar analyses have been performed by the Congressional Budget Office, the Comptroller of New York, the Office of Legislative Research of the Connecticut General Assembly, and the Vermont Civil Union Review Commission. “All of these studies have shown that recognizing the rights of same-sex couples will have a positive impact on federal or state budgets,” said Sears. The study predicts that New Mexico will experience an increase in tourism if it extends marriage to gay and lesbian couples, at least for the first few years. Each year New Mexico would benefit from over $29 million in increased business revenues, generating more than $1.4 million in tax revenues for the State. This finding echoes Forbes magazine’s estimate that if same-sex marriage were legalized across the U.S., gay and lesbian weddings would generate $16.8 billion in spending during the first several years. The other major fiscal gain for New Mexico will result from the State treating same-sex and different-sex married couples equally under benefit programs such as Medicaid, TANF, and New Mexikids. Extending marriage to gay and lesbian couples will mean that the income of a person’s same-sex married partner will be included when determining eligibility for such programs. “Even if only a small percentage of individuals living with partners marry and become ineligible for public benefits,” said economist and study co-author Dr. M.V. Lee Badgett of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, “New Mexico is likely to reduce its expenditures on these programs by hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.” This study can be accessed at the Williams Institute website, www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute.
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