SOCIAL RESEARCH on GLBT people has begun to provide the kind of detailed knowledge base that’s been available for other minorities for many decades, so at last we can start to answer some of the basic questions that define this group as minority. Just how many GLBT people are there as a proportion of the total population? How affluent are they relative to other groups? How do they compare in public health areas such as smoking and suicide? These are the kinds of questions for which data have been collected in excrutiating detail for African-Americans, women, and other demographic groups, but which have only recently been collected in any systematic way for GLBT people. And even then the method is often far from perfect. For example, the U.S. Census now asks a question about domestic partners that allows us to examine one subset of gay people, but that’s all. Still, a picture is beginning to emerge of America’s newest minority, as witness the following studies from sources both public and private.
Size and the U.S. Census
The 2000 U.S. Census captured a piece of data that made it possible for gay people to identify themselves as such—or at least those with a domestic partner—and thus provided a window into the residence patterns and income distributions and other vital statistics of America’s newest minority. The resulting statistics make for endlessly fascinating analysis (at least for data queens), but it’s important to understand what these data are based upon. A question on the Census form asked the respondent to list other household members, followed by: “How is this person related?” For persons living together who were unrelated, the options included: “Roomer, boarder,” “Housemate, roommate,” “Unmarried partner,” and “Foster child.” People who checked off “Unmarried partner” for a person of the same sex have been considered gay, lesbian, or bisexual (GLB) for purposes of the various analyses that have been completed to date. Not included are the vast numbers of gay people who are single or who have a partner but don’t happen to live with that person.
Still, the question did capture a significant portion of the GLB population. And the magic number is 1,188,782—the final count of Americans who indicated that they currently live with an unmarried partner. This means that there are just under 600,000 households—or reported households—headed by a gay or lesbian couple. This figure in turn can be used to project a rough estimate of the number of gay people and their proportion of the total population—but only when certain assumptions are made as to the proportion of GLB people who belong to such a household.
The most comprehensive analysis of the 2000 Census has been carried out by the Urban Institute, a think tank and publishing house located in Washington, D.C. (An excerpt from the UI’s report, The Gay & Lesbian Atlas, appeared in the Sept.-Oct. ’04 issue of this journal.) Drawing from other research, the UI analysis assumes that 23.5 percent of gay men, and 42.7 percent of lesbians, have a domestic partner. They also make the quite reasonable assumption that the Census total represents a substantial undercount, since many people would presumably be reluctant to disclose such personal information on an official government form. This figure is by definition unknowable, so the UI offers two possible scenarios, a 25 percent undercount and a fifty percent undercount. Here are the findings that appear in the Atlas:
Even the high estimate falls somewhat shy of estimates derived by other methods. For example, exit polls after elections, in which people have to come out much more explicitly to a pollster, consistently show that between four and five percent of the population is gay or lesbian. Nevertheless, this estimate provides the closest thing yet to a “hard” analysis based upon a large sample—in this case, the entire U.S. population.
How Big a Niche?
The consumer research firm of Witeck-Combs Communications projects the collective buying power of GLB people at $610 billion for 2005. With its partner, a company with the intriguing name of Packaged Facts, Witeck-Combs produces an annual report titled “The U.S. Gay and Lesbian Market,” which estimates the size and characteristics of gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) consumers for the upcoming year. This figure is up from the corresponding 2003 figure (adjusted) of $485 billion. In the earlier year, the firm also provided data on the buying power of other minorities to give an idea of the relative size of the GLB market.
The report indicates that the GLB population figure is based on the assumption that this demographic group makes up between six and seven percent of the U.S. adult population—a figure it characterizes as “conservatively benchmarked”—yielding a range of fourteen to sixteen million. It also assumes that GLB income patterns are roughly the same as those of the adult population as a whole, but corrects for the disproportionate concentration of gay men in metropolitan areas (as suggested by household data for same-sex couples in the 2000 Census). It also adjusts for the higher proportion of men in the overall GLB population.
It will also be noted that the projections assume a relatively high per capita income for GLB folks relative to other minorities, higher even than the figure for Asian-Americans. It should be noted that this question has been the subject of some controversy among researchers, with one camp claiming that gay and lesbian incomes tend to be higher than the average for all Americans, and the other claiming that GLBT people—especially gay men—are less well-off than their straight counterparts, suggesting some negative effects to being gay. Nevertheless, the fact remains that GLB people wield considerable buying power and do appear, if targeted marketing by major corporations is any indication, to be thought of as an upscale market.
Other highlights of the 2004 study: “This new Packaged Facts report indicates that at least two million gays are approaching or have already reached retirement age. By 2020, some 5.7 million, or 25 percent of the gay community, will be fifty or older. … There are 1.8 million gay and lesbian households with children, and there are approximately 2.6 million children living with gay parents.”
Hooking Up
Just over half of all gay men and lesbians say they’re in a long-term relationship in an on-line survey conducted by Syracuse University and OpusComm Group. With about 8,000 respondents completing a lengthy questionnaire over a six-week period, the study represents what may be the largest private survey of GLBT people ever conducted. And while caution must be exercised in generalizing the study’s findings to all gay people because only those with access to the Internet were included, the researchers believe that this drawback is offset by the anonymity of the Internet—many people are reluctant to share sensitive information with a “real person”—and by respondents’ ability to complete the survey at an unhurried pace.
What the “2003/4 Gay/Lesbian Consumer Online Census” principally found was that about 52 percent of gay and lesbian respondents defined themselves as “partnered,” of whom 58 percent have been in a relationship for four years or more. An earlier study (2001) provided a breakdown by sex for some of the categories, indicating that a much higher proportion of gay men than lesbians are unpartnered.
Relationship Status Percent 2001 Study
Men Women
Partnered 52%
Single 26 33 21
Single and dating 15 20 14
Civil union or married 5 1 5
Widowed/other 2
Length of Current Relationship
Less than a year 11%
1 – 3 years 31
4 – 7 years 29
8 – 11 years 14
12 – 15 years 6
16 – 19 years 4
20 years or more 5
As a frame of reference for comparison, U.S. Census data indicate that about 54 percent of all U.S. adults were married in 2002, with the remaining 46 percent defined as “never married” (28 percent), “widowed” (six percent), or “divorced / separated” (twelve percent). While the categories are not strictly comparable, it is striking that the proportion of GLBT people who are “partnered” is similar to the proportion of all Americans who are legally wed.
Shacking Up
According to the most recent U.S. Census, the number of unmarried couples surged from 3.2 million to 5.5 million from 1990 to 2000. Of these, some 600,000 are same-sex couples, which is around one percent of all U.S. households led by couples (i.e., excluding singles and other non-couple arrangements). While this undoubtedly represents a substantial underestimate of the actual number of gay and lesbian couples—in addition to the confidentiality issue, some may simply not think of themselves as “unmarried partners”—it does provide a baseline for the number of GLB couples living in America.
The figure of 600,000 actually represents a big jump from the 150,000 or so that turned up in the 1990 Census, the first to include the “unmarried partner” checkoff. As a component of all unmarried couples living together, the GLB share rose from about five percent to eleven percent from 1990 to 2000. The fact that so many more gay couples are willing to come out “officially” is encouraging, while the magnitude of this ten-year jump hints at the potential for an even larger increase in the next Census.
One finding that’s perhaps unexpected is that GLB partners tend to follow many of the demographic trends for all unmarried couples. If gay people tend to be clustered in urban areas rather than the suburbs or small towns, the same is also true of unmarried couples in general. And whether they’re gay or straight, unmarried partners are far more likely than are married heterosexual couples to be of mixed race or ethnicity.
Another surprise is that the proportion of gay couples raising children is not too far behind the proportion of cohabiting straight couples who have kids—which itself is almost as high as the corresponding figure for married couples. The gap is especially small for women: some 33 percent of all cohabiting lesbian partners have children under eighteen in their homes compared to 43 percent for unmarried straight partners and 46 percent for married couples. For gay male partners the figure is 22 percent—still surprisingly high when held up to the stereotype of gay men as non-procreative drones. (See “Married-Couple and Unmarried-Partner Households” at www.census.gov.) What this means in raw numerical terms is that around 162,000 American households are comprised of a gay or lesbian couple and their children—and that’s without the probable undercount noted above.
Class and Sexual Orientation
Do GLBT people constitute a classic minority that suffers from the effects of anti-gay discrimination, or are they a high-living bunch who out-earn their fellow Americans by a significant margin? Both images have been put forth by various parties with a cultural or political agenda, and both have been supported by some social research.
Some very early research, notably a survey of Advocate readers in the late 1970’s, had hinted at a relatively affluent and well-educated gay population, concentrated in the professions, but the first hard data didn’t arrive until a decade later courtesy of a marketing firm called Overlooked Opinions. Coming at the height of the AIDS epidemic during a time when gay men’s fortunes in particular seemed at a low ebb, the firm reported in 1989 that gay people (mostly men) tended to have substantially higher incomes—and much more disposable income—than the general population. They also found that gays had a considerable advantage in educational attainment—a far greater gap, in fact, than the difference in income. This research received a huge amount of publicity and almost single-handedly created what would become the dominant image of gay people thereafter, that of an especially affluent minority with a taste for luxury items and exotic travel.
But it wasn’t long before Overlooked Opinions’ research was being called into question. The trouble was that its sample of gays—drawn from lists of magazine subscribers, bookstore buyers, and the like—was being compared to a very different population of Americans as reflected in U.S. Census reports and other standard surveys. This method of comparison disqualified the research from any claim of scientific validity, and it seemed prima facie that the gay sample had been cherry-picked for its upscale characteristics. The first attempt to rectify this flaw was that of Lee Badgett, who used data from a number of sources that permitted gay and straight respondents to be compared head-to-head. Analyzing data from the 1990 Census and two private sources (the General Social Survey and the Yankelovitch Monitor), Badgett found that gay men on average earned considerably less than straight men—four to seven percent in raw numbers but as much as 27 percent when other factors, such as education and geography, were taken into account. On the other hand, the picture for lesbians was more ambiguous, with one study showing a small advantage for lesbians and another a substantial disadvantage.
Two subsequent studies, both published in 2001, tended to confirm Badgett’s findings. Both made use of General Social Survey data but were able to take advantage of data through 1996 (Badgett’s was for 1989–91). A paper by Dan A. Black et al. (Jan. 2001) concluded that lesbians earned about nine percent more than heterosexual women and that gay men earned about twelve percent less than straight men. An article by Nathan Berg and Donald Lien (Oct. 2001) developed a sophisticated model to control for a wide range of factors (level of education, years of experience, place of residence, etc.) and concluded that—when all these factors are taken into account— lesbians earn some thirty percent more than heterosexual women, while gay men earn around 22 percent less than their non-gay counterparts.
Analysis of the 2000 Census provides a more recent data point, albeit one that includes only gay men and lesbians who are in a domestic partnership. This analysis generally confirms the broad findings of the three earlier studies. In raw data terms, gay men earn some $3,000 less than straight men, which is much less than ten percent; but this does not take into account such factors as educational attainment. Indeed one consistent finding in all the research is that gay men have more years of education than straight—yet this advantage does not seem to be reflected in their earnings. This opens the possibility of societal discrimination against gay men. On the other hand, the finding that lesbians out-earn their heterosexual sisters is also being broadly confirmed by 2000 Census data, which raises the intriguing question: if gay men are harmed by their sexual orientation, are lesbians somehow helped by theirs?
One intriguing finding is that gay men who are in a domestic partnership tend to earn less than single gay men—but since men in general tend to earn more than women in the U.S., gay male couples earn more on average than straight married couples.
Household Finance
The 2000 Census set up a category of domestic households headed by “unmarried partners” that could be either a gay couple or a straight couple living together, each of which can then be compared to married straight couples. The Urban Institute analyzed data for fifteen states, including the three largest—California, New York, and Texas—and concluded that gay and lesbian households were about as affluent as married heterosexual households. (Other states covered in the report were Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Wyoming.) What they found is that the median income for gay and lesbian couples, around $32,000, was very close to the figure for married couples. However, median income for unmarried straight couples was fully $8,000 lower than the corresponding figure for both gay partners and straight married couples.
Despite this income parity between gay and straight couples, the two groups differed in a number of important respects, notably in their highest level of educational attainment. More than 35 percent of people living with same-sex partners had a college degree in 2000 compared with 28 percent of married people and nineteen percent of opposite-sex unmarried partners. Other research has consistently shown a similar pattern, suggesting that there could be some anti-gay bias in the job market that has to be made up through higher educational attainment.
Another difference emerged with respect to home ownership, with a smaller proportion of gay and lesbian couples (64 percent) owning a home than heterosexual couples (78 percent). Most of the explanation probably lies in the fact that GLBT people tend to be clustered in cities, where more people typically rent their home than in less urban areas. (Only 41 percent of heterosexual unmarried couples own their home, reflecting their lower affluence.) Buying a home in a large city tends to be an expensive proposition: for those gay couples that do own their home, the median value of their property ($162,000) is $25,000 higher than it is for their straight married counterparts.
Serving and Telling
A recent report from the Urban Institute estimates that at least 65,000 lesbian and gay Americans are serving in the U.S. Armed Forces—on active duty, in the reserves, or in the National Guard—this, despite the military’s ongoing policy of discouraging gay people from serving. While the outright ban on service was lifted with the installation of the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in 1993, which permitted service so long as it was not disclosed to one’s fellow service members, this policy has proven as punitive toward gay men and lesbians in uniform as its predecessor. Indeed, in the ten years since the enactment of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” about 10,000 soldiers have been discharged for being gay or lesbian, a steady rate of a thousand a year that matches or even exceeds the earlier rate.
The report, “Gay Men and Lesbians in the U.S. Military: Estimates from Census 2000,” takes advantage of the item on the Census questionnaire that identifies people who have a same-sex “unmarried partner.” Using a multiplier to account for gay people who do not live with a same-sex partner, the Institute arrived at the 65,000 figure, which it views as a “conservative” estimate given the understandable reluctance of many gay and lesbian soldiers to reveal this information.
While this figure represents less than three percent of all U.S. military forces, the number is by no means trivial. As C. Dixon Osburn, Executive Director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), noted on the study’s release last October: “The number of lesbians and gays in service today is equal to half the total force strength currently serving in Iraq and is more than twice the 30,000 additional troops the Army Chief of Staff says he needs to fight the war on terrorism.”
Of the 65,000, it is estimated that about 36,000 gay men and lesbians are serving on active duty, with the National Guard and reserves making up the balance. According to the report, lesbians comprise some five percent of all female military personnel, while gay men account for two percent of all male personnel. The total number of lesbians and gays serving represents 2.8 percent of the nation’s roughly 2.3 million military forces. The length of service for gay men is about equal to their heterosexual colleagues, while lesbians typically serve longer than their straight counterparts.
Focusing on the historical role of women in the U.S. military, the report observes that lesbians have a long history of service in the armed forces. Nearly one in ten coupled lesbians aged 63 to 67 served in the Korean War compared to less than one in 100 non-gay women. In the ten years from 1990 to 2000, service rates among coupled lesbians aged eighteen to 27 were more than three times higher than rates among other women.
In a 2003 report, the Institute found that about one million lesbian and gay veterans were living in the U.S. The report shows a concentration of those veterans in specific areas. Among metropolitan areas, Los Angeles (26,599), Washington, D.C. (25,399), San Diego (21,465), Chicago (18,246) and New York (17,057) have the highest populations of gay and lesbian veterans. Washington, D.C., leads all states with a rate of just over ten lesbian or gay veterans per one thousand adults, more than double the national average. Per capita rates are also high in Vermont (7.2), Hawaii (6.9), Maine (6.7), and Washington (6.5). The metropolitan areas with the highest per capita rates of gay and lesbian veterans include Santa Rosa (14.2), Pensacola (12.2), San Francisco (11.3), San Diego (10.3), and Norfolk (8.6).
About eight percent of lesbian partners said they had prior military service, compared with one percent of women who are married or who are in unmarried partnerships. About fourteen percent of gay men had served in the military, about the same as for men in unmarried partnerships but half the rate of married men.
Out and Down in High School
A recent poll of high school students conducted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (glsen) found that the vast majority of today’s students are aware of GLBT issues and know someone personally who’s gay, but that homophobic language continues to be widespread in today’s high schools. The national poll, conducted by Widmeyer Research and Polling in conjunction with Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates, Inc., interviewed students in grades nine to twelve from across the country about their sexual orientation, their experience with name-calling, and general attitudes towards lesbian and gay people in their school.
Of the nearly 900 students in the sample, about five percent identified themselves as lesbian or gay, sixteen percent reported that they had a gay or lesbian family member, and 72 percent said they knew someone who was gay or lesbian. That fully five percent of the students say they’re gay—a figure that matches many estimates of the adult gay population—attests to the fact that gay people are coming out far earlier today than they did a decade or two ago. Of the nearly three-fourths of all students who said they knew a gay or lesbian person, 48 percent said they knew a classmate, thirty percent said they had a close friend, and eleven percent had a teacher who was lesbian or gay. When asked how their attitudes toward gay people were shaped, fully 65 percent of all students cited personal experiences with gay people as an important factor, compared to 58 percent who cited their parents and 28 percent who cited TV shows.
The bad news is that the vast majority of GLB students—more than four out of five—reported that they had been verbally, sexually, or physically harassed at school because of their sexual orientation. Most troubling of all, nearly two out of five of these students reported being physically harassed. This experience of victimization is confirmed by the fact that 66 percent of all students admitted to having used homophobic language, including the ever popular “that’s so gay” to describe something stupid or uncool. Some 81 percent reported that they often heard homophobic language in their school.
One feature of the 2003 glsen study was its desire to ascertain the consequences of anti-gay harassment in America’s high schools, and it found that the cost is high. Youths who reported having experienced a high level of verbal harassment were twice as likely as other students to say they didn’t intend to go to college, and this group had a significantly lower grade point average (2.9 versus 3.3). About 83 percent of all students reported that faculty members never or rarely intervened when they witnessed an incident of anti-gay harassment.
This is too bad, since the study also found that the academic shortfall of GLBT students was helped considerably by the presence of a supportive teacher. While 24 percent of gay students who could not identify a supportive faculty member said they didn’t plan to attend college, that figure dropped to ten percent for those who had such support. Another factor that helped academic performance was the presence of a school policy against anti-gay harassment: nearly one in three gay students reported that they had skipped school in the past month to avoid harassment, a figure that’s 40 percent higher at schools lacking such a policy than at those that have one.
Smokin’
Studies have consistently shown that the rate of cigarette smoking for both lesbians and gay men is substantially higher than the rate for non-gay adolescents and adults. This finding was confirmed most recently at the annual conference of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association, where research was presented showing that GLBT people smoke at a rate that’s forty to sixty percent higher than the U.S. average. Since a pattern of adult smoking almost always begins in adolescence, special attention has typically been paid to this age group. Results from an ongoing national study of U.S. teenagers, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, provided new cause for concern.
The survey, which included some 12,000 adolescents in grades seven through twelve, set out to assess the students’ health status as well as the causes and contexts of health-related behaviors. About eight percent of the participants indicated that they had experienced some same-sex attraction or had been involved in a same-sex relationship. These students reported significantly higher rates of smoking than did youths who reported only opposite-sex attractions or relationships. Nearly 45 percent of the females and 35 percent of the males in this group were smokers compared with only 29 percent for both male and female youths who were exclusively heterosexual.
