Patterns of Gay Male and Lesbian Partnering in the States and Metropolitan Areas of the United States in 2010

Dudley L. Poston, Jr., Texas A&M University
Yu-Ting Chang, Texas A&M University
Danielle Deng, Texas A&M University

We use data from the 2010 Census to analyze patterns of gay male partnering and lesbian partnering in the states and metropolitan areas of the United States. We discuss the quality of the same-sex partnering data from the 2010 census. We develop indexes of gay male partnering and lesbian partnering for each of the fifty states using the data from the census and a second set of data adjusted for bias. We compare and contrast the index values calculated with both sets of data. We test various hypotheses relating characteristics of the states with the gay male and lesbian partnering rates. When estimating regression models to predict the prevalence of same-sex partnering across the states, it appears to make no difference in the results if one calculates the indexes with the original same-sex data or with the preferred same-sex data. Finally, we estimate similar multiple regressions among the metropolitan areas.