New census knowledge provides the clearest image so far of the affect of the historic 2015 Supreme Court docket ruling that legalized same-sex unions. Of the nation’s 127 million households in 2020, roughly 1.2 million have been same-sex {couples}, of which 0.5% are married and 0.4% are single. Whereas the information is proscribed, it’s probably the most full data on same-sex {couples} so far, providing a take a look at breakout by location and race. And it supplied some fascinating comparisons to opposite-sex {couples} as nicely.
“Whereas there have been considerably extra opposite-sex spouses (58.0 million) than opposite-sex companions (8.3 million) in 2020, the hole was a lot narrower amongst same-sex {couples}: there have been 668,497 same-sex spouses in comparison with 500,073 same-sex companions,” the Census Bureau wrote in a press launch.
General, same-sex {couples} made up 1.7% of the entire variety of coupled households.
The District of Columbia had the biggest share of same-sex married couple households (1.4% and 1.2%, respectively). Vermont, Massachusetts and Hawaii had 0.8% shares. And Washington state, California, Florida, Maine, Nevada and Oregon had 0.7%.
North Dakota, South Dakota and Puerto Rico had the smallest variety of same-sex married {couples}, tied at 0.2% every.
One-person households have been on the rise from 1990 to 2020, however the majority of residence have been married {couples}, with almost two-thirds of households having two spouses. That stated, the variety of married-couple households fell from 55% in 1990 to only 46% in 2020.
Roughly 9 million households have been made up of cohabitating {couples}.
The census additionally underscored the growing old inhabitants within the U.S. One in six People is now over the age of 65, in comparison with one-in-eight a decade in the past.
