Same-Sex Couples’ Consistency in Reports of Marital Status

Daphne A. Lofquist, U.S. Census Bureau

Limited research has examined how same-sex couples report their marital status, especially when broken out by those who report themselves as spouses versus unmarried partners.Using the 2010 ACS, my findings show that 24 percent of all same-sex couples chose “now married” in the United States. When broken out by response to the relationship item, almost 80 percent of those reported as spouse chose “now married” compared to 3 percent of those reported as unmarried partner. Forty-one percent of all same-sex couples living in states that perform same-sex marriage and 21 percent living in states with no legal recognition reported as married. Almost 88 percent of those households reported as spouses had at least one own child present as compared to close to 82 percent in households reported as unmarried partners. In logistic regression models the presence of own children was strongly associated with whether couples reported as married.