While the pay gap between women and men is certainly part of the explanation, I find it interesting that, as I said in my post, “women in same-sex couples (parents and not) earn ’significantly more’ on average than married women.” This means we can’t just take the average U.S. pay gap and apply it to same-sex couples. There’s clearly room for much further research on the subject of LGBT families and incomes . . . I’m looking forward to it.

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AJ: Another interesting point but no, they don’t break it out by race. There have been studies based on race and same sex couples – see this one from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force as an example.

Bill: Yep, all makes sense. Anya Kamenetz at Yahoo! Personal Finance just wrote a column about women making less than men. It was amazing how many of the Yahoos (and I suspect male) try to dispute this statistic. Also, Paula wrote an interesting post here awhile back on the subject: How $0.25 Leaves Lesbian Households Millions Short.

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1. More same-sex female couples raise children than same-sex male couples.
2. Women make less than men.

For point #1, I can’t find statistics for the US, but I did find some for Canada. According to the 2001 census data from Canada, “About 15% of the 15,200 female same-sex couples are living with children, compared to only 3% of male same-sex couples.” That’s a huge difference. That means 83% of all same-sex couples with children are female.

The same UCLA studies you cited above already support point #2, along with about a zillion other studies.

Also, consider some other statistics from the study. For instance, the data from Illinois says:

“The median income of same-sex couple households in Illinois is $65,200, which is similar to the $63,400 median for married couples. The average household income of same-sex couples is $85,364, which is not statistically significantly different from $80,209 for married couples.”

The data for Michigan and Rhode Island shows the same thing. So we know that overall, same-sex couples actually are making about the same amount as straight couples. The disparity only happens when you narrow it down to same-sex couples with children, which, based on the Canada statistics, are far more likely to be women than men.

So I think this study is just telling us something we already knew. Women make less than men, and are less likely to own houses. I’m kind of surprised the people behind the study didn’t break it down by sex to make the conclusions more meaningful, but I guess that would have made it less interesting.

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Also, I assume that out gay couples are more likely to live in and near cities, and property values tend to be higher in cities. If this is the case, then lower home ownership rates for gay couples aren’t necessarily a sign of being worse off.

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I find it particularly interesting since some people seem to believe that only rich people or upper-middle class people are glbtq.

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