Category: Faculty Research

Last week’s historic Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage resulted in a flurry of media appearances by CPPA Director M.V. Lee Badgett, an internationally recognized expert on LGBT economic issues.

In extended television and radio interviews, as well as shorter print segments, Badgett primarily has spoken on two topics:

• The boost that legalizing same-sex marriage can provide to local businesses and state economies; and
• The profound financial impact that the Supreme Court decisions could have on legally married same-sex couples.

When the Supreme Court justices stayed the lower court’s decision on California’s Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage, they essentially re-opened the door to same-sex couples to marry in that state. On average, each couple marrying in the United States spends more than $25,000 on their wedding. And with about 37,000 same-sex couples poised to tie the knot in California over the next three years, Badgett estimates, that state is likely to experience a significant economic booster thanks to the high court’s ruling.

While the weddings themselves will provide an economic boon to states and wedding-related businesses, legally married same-sex couples will face more of a mixed bag when it comes to how their newly federally recognized unions will affect their household finances, says Badgett. For example, some couples will pay more to the IRS when filing taxes jointly than they would if they filed separately. Overall, though, when considering a lifetime of taxes, health insurance premiums and retirement payments, the overturning of the federal Defense of Marriage Act should result in tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings for married same-sex couples.

Badgett was an expert witness during the 2010 Proposition 8 trial in California and is research director at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy. Her most recent book, When Gay People Get Married: What Happens When Societies Legalize Same-Sex Marriage, addresses the core issues in marriage debates in European countries and the U.S.

She has been interviewed about the Supreme Court decisions on The Real News Network, Bloomberg News and Southern California Public Radio; she has been quoted in articles about the economic impacts of the Supreme Court rulings in Politico, the Montreal Gazette, Today.com, Bankrate.com and CNBC.

Poverty rates among all Americans have increased during the current recession, but people in our country’s lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) communities are more likely to be poor than their heterosexual counterparts, according to a new study co-authored by CPPA Director and Economics Professor M.V. Lee Badgett.

The report, New Patterns of Poverty in the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community, shows that women, children and African Americans are particularly vulnerable. For example, the poverty rate among African American same-sex couples is more than twice the rate of different-sex married African Americans.

This results in dramatic poverty among the children of African American same-sex couples: 52.3 percent of African American children in gay male households live in poverty — the highest poverty rate of any children in any household type. Even among all LGB couples, children of any race are more likely to be poor than their peers in different-sex households: Nearly 25 percent of children living with a male same-sex couple and 19.2 percent of children living with a female same-sex couple are in poverty, compared to 12.1 percent of children living with married different-sex couples.

“It’s always shocking to me to see these figures for kids, and the higher poverty rates for the households that have kids,” said Badgett during an NBC interview. “We do worry that it will be seen that same-sex couples aren’t good parents, aren’t fit parents, or that African-American same-sex couples aren’t good parents or fit parents. The economic situations that people find themselves in don’t reflect their fitness at being parents. It just reflects how hard it is for them to raise their kids and shows there’s a need for support, including the right to marry and to strengthen their family’s economic situation or to make it more secure by being able to tap into all the benefits that come with marriage.”

Badgett published the report through the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, where she serves as research director. She and co-authors Laura Durso and Alyssa Schneebaum used data from four sources — the 2010 American Community Survey; the 2006-2010 National Survey of Family Growth; the 2007-2009 California Health Interview Survey; and a 2012 Gallup Daily Tracking Poll — to estimate poverty rates during the second half of last decade for different groups within the LGB population.

In addition to the dramatic poverty figures for children growing up in same-sex households, the researchers found that lesbian couples are far more likely to get food stamps than are either gay male or married heterosexual couples: 14.1 percent of lesbian couples receive that form of government assistance, compared with 7.7 percent of gay male couples and 6.5 percent of different-sex married couples.

The new study has received media attention across the United States, including interviews on NBC and NPR, and a Slate article.