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Left Out? Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Poverty in the U.S.

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Abstract

This paper analyzes the risk of poverty for self-identified lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people from mid-2013 through 2016 in the National Health Interview Survey, a nationally representative survey of households that includes a sexual orientation question based on identity (n = 112,143). The study tests the role of family structure—living with a spouse or partner and having children—on the risk of poverty for LGB and heterosexual respondents. After controlling for education, demographic, and health measures in a probit model, lesbians and gay men are as likely to be poor as similar heterosexuals, but bisexual women and men are significantly more likely to be poor, regardless of relationship status. Single and childless gay men are also more likely to be poor than single heterosexual men. Being in a relationship reduces the likelihood of poverty for people of all sexual orientations, but the data show evidence of a gender composition effect: married male same-sex couples are less likely and unmarried female same-sex couples more likely to be poor than their married counterparts. Marriage reduces gay men’s poverty risk more and children increase their poverty risk less than for heterosexual men.

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Notes

  1. Transgender people are not included in this paper since the datasets used to study poverty in this and earlier studies do not include questions on gender identity. However, a recent survey of a large convenience sample of transgender people found that 29% were living in poverty (James et al. 2016).

  2. Transgender people are not identifiable in the current NHIS. Because of the lack of a question on gender identity, the assumption in this paper is that almost all of those denoted as male or female (or men and women) are cisgender, that is, not transgender. A recent estimate is that 0.6% of the population is transgender (Flores et al. 2016).

  3. The U.S. Census Bureau describes the datasets and their own analysis of these datasets at https://www.census.gov/topics/families/same-sex-couples.html, last accessed July 24, 2017. In addition to the CPS, ACS, and Decennial Census, the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and the American Housing Survey (AHS) include data on same-sex couples. No one has yet published work on poverty from the SIPP or AHS.

  4. This threshold varies with the number of family members and their ages, treating people below age 18 and above 65 slightly differently from those in the range 18-64. For example, the FPL is $12,486 for a single person under 65 and $11,511 for someone over 65. The FPL is $24,339 for a family with two adults and two children under 18 years but $24,755 for four adults.

  5. The U.S. Census Bureau will end its current practice of editing same-sex married couples into unmarried partners in 2018, allowing the same-sex married couples to be counted as a family in the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement, the source of official poverty statistics (Edwards and Lindstrom 2017).

  6. See Blank 2008. The Supplemental Poverty Measure was created by the Census Bureau to include non-cash assistance and some expenses, but the data needed to calculate this measure are not available in any data source with questions on sexual orientation. This supplemental measure also departs from the official measure by including the income of a cohabiting partner in the family income calculation.

  7. They inflated incomes to 2006 dollars for comparison with 2006 poverty thresholds.

  8. The 2013 survey instrument included follow-ups for those responding “something else” or “I don’t know the answer.” Those follow-up questions are not included in the public use data, but a published analysis revealed that almost 40% of the 56 “something else” responses come from people who checked that they “Do not use labels to identify yourself” and another 18% came from people who checked “Do not think of yourself as having sexuality” (Dahlhamer et al. 2014). Two of the respondents answering “something else” said that they identified as “queer, trisexual, omnisexual, or pansexual,” three others said that they identified as “transgender, transsexual, or gender variant,” and two others reported they were straight or heterosexual in the follow-up. Of the respondents who answered, “I don’t know,” almost 30% said they had “not figured out or are in the process of figuring out sexuality,” and another 29% said they “don’t understand the words.” Given these responses, the authors concluded that few of these individuals could be recoded into sexual orientation categories but also that these respondent might be sexual minorities.

  9. This question about functional limitations asks, “By yourself, and without using any special equipment, how difficult is it for you to…” followed by twelve common activities related to walking, standing on ones feet, sitting for long periods, stooping, reaching, grasping, lifting, pushing or pulling, going out, socializing, or relaxing. One or more limitations trigger this paper’s overall disability definition. The NHIS also includes disability questions similar to those used on other federal surveys, but they were only administered to about half of the individual respondents, making their use impractical.

  10. This definition is consistent with the measures used in the American Community Survey since 2013. Until 2013, the ACS recoded same-sex couples who indicated that they were married into the unmarried partner category.

  11. In the Pew study, bisexuals also report fewer experiences of discrimination than do gay men and lesbians, but that might be because of lower levels of disclosure (pp. 42, 44).

  12. I thank Bianca Wilson for suggesting this point.

  13. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for this point. Those states and their poverty rates in 2015 were Ohio 14.8%, Michigan 15.8%, Tennessee 16.7%, Kentucky 18.5%, Arkansas 19.1%, Georgia 17%, Louisiana 19.6%, Mississippi 22%, Nebraska 12.6%, North Dakota 11%, South Dakota 13.7%, and Texas 15.9% (Glassman 2016).

  14. However, there is some evidence that same-sex couples were willing to travel to other states to marry, which would have diminished the impact of this form of selection bias, if it existed (Badgett and Herman 2011).

  15. See Benefits.gov, “Temporary Assistance for Needy Families,” https://www.benefits.gov/benefits/benefit-details/613, last accessed 8/16/17; Tax Policy Center, Briefing Book, http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/what-earned-income-tax-credit-eitc, last accessed 8/16/17; U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP: Able-Bodied Adults Without Dependents,” https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/able-bodied-adults-without-dependents-abawds, last accessed 8/16/17.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks the Williams Institute at UCLA for financial support, Dr. Sam Abariga for his excellent research assistance, and anonymous referees for suggestions. The author thanks Gary Gates, Bianca Wilson, Alyssa Schneebaum, Christopher Carpenter, Marieka Klawitter, and Brad Sears for their feedback and the audiences at Colorado State University, the University of Minnesota, and Mathematica for comments and suggestions.

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  1. Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA

    M. V. Lee Badgett

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Correspondence to M. V. Lee Badgett.

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Badgett, M.V.L. Left Out? Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Poverty in the U.S.. Popul Res Policy Rev 37, 667–702 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-018-9457-5

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