Creative Class

With the passage of the New York Marriage Equality Act, the number of gay couples in the US who are eligible to marry has now doubled, as my post yesterday noted.  Approximately 9 million Americans are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) – slightly less than four percent of the population, according a recent study by Gary Gates of UCLA’s Williams Institute.  Approximately half of lesbians and gay men are members of same-sex couples including an estimated 160,000 who are married, according to Gates’ research. Nearly one in five same-sex couple households are raising children, compared to about 45 percent of heterosexual couples, according to figures from the American Community Survey (ACS).

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Same-sex couples have been getting married for five years now in Massachusetts. Gary Gates of UCLA’s Williams Institute has done the number-crunching and identified intriguing economic benefits.

“Data from the American Community Survey suggest that marriage equality has a small but positive impact on the number of individuals in same-sex couples who are attracted to a state. However, marriage equality appears to have a larger impact on the types of individuals in same-sex couples who are attracted to a state. In Massachusetts, marriage equality resulted in an increase of younger, female, and more highly educated and skilled individuals in same-sex couples moving to the state… The evidence that marriage equality may enhance the ability of Massachusetts to attract highly skilled creative class workers among those in same-sex couples offers some support that the policy has the potential to have a long-term positive economic impact.”