Census: Households led by gay couples rose 80 percent

The number of U.S. households led by same-sex couples rose about 80 percent in the past 10 years, and more than 130,000 couples listed themselves as married, new U.S. Census Bureau data show.

But such households are still relatively rare: When compared with the nation’s 116 million households in 2010, gay-couple-led households accounted for barely more than half of 1 percent.

There were 358,390 gay couple households in 2000 and 646,464 such households in 2010, according to updated tallies from the decennial surveys.

The more than 288,000 households added during that time were no doubt influenced by the introduction of gay marriage in six states and the District of Columbia, as well as other types of domestic unions adopted in other states.

In an unusual twist, the bureau Tuesday released three estimates about the gay couple population.

Bureau officials said they had discovered a significant error rate with gay couple tallies previously released with 2010 census statistics. Because of the format of the door-to-door surveys, they explained, some opposite-sex couples checked the wrong boxes. This led to a concern that the number of same-sex couples was “artificially inflated” to 901,997.

The bureau conducted an intensive analysis of its data, which was peer-reviewed by leading researchers on gay issues such as Gary Gates. This included using a name-indexing process to discern whether someone named Pat or Leslie was male or female.

The 646,464 same-sex households the bureau re-identified from the 2010 census was deemed satisfactory because it was relatively close to the 593,324 households found by the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS).

So, while “there’s no dispute that the same-sex-couple population increased between 2000 and 2010, what we tried to do was get a better grip on exactly what the numbers were and what the actual increase was,” said Martin O’Connell, chief of the fertility and family statistics branch in the bureau’s social, economic and housing statistics division.

“We tried to eliminate population numbers that seemed to be artificially high,” and the 646,464-household figure “is what we came up with,” he said.

Said Robert M. Groves, bureau director: “We’re providing all three - the revised, original and ACS estimates - together to provide users with the full, transparent picture of our current measures of same-sex couples.”

The new estimates included marital status of gay couples: For instance, the 2010 census found 131,729 married same-sex couples and 514,735 unmarried same-sex partners, while the 2010 ACS found 152,335 married and 440,989 unmarried couples.

When the bureau looked at local data, it found the highest concentrations of gay couples - more than 1 percent of all households - in Vermont and Massachusetts, as well as the District.

In their landmark 2004 Gay and Lesbian Atlas, Mr. Gates and co-author Jason Ost noted that the 2000 census provided “the first empirical confirmation” that unmarried same-sex partners were in virtually all - 99.3 percent - U.S. counties.

Counting gay couples was important, they said, not only to prove the existence of such couples, but also to build political awareness, provide public health services and allow for targeted marketing to the gay community, which in 2002 was worth $485 billion.

“The number of gay and lesbian couples in committed, loving relationships, raising families together, continues to grow, leaving more and more families without the critical safety net of marriage,” Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, said Tuesday.

The new census data, he said, “reiterate the need to end marriage discrimination once and for all.”