ACS Data Users Group

I'm looking for data on same-sex couples at the place level. I know that there is information available about same-sex unmarried partners (table B11009), but I can't seem to locate any data on same-sex married couples.

Is this data available? If so, where might I find it?

Thanks in advance for the help!

Bailey Werner

Planning Data Intern

City of Cambridge Community Development Department

There are not tables (that I can see) that report same-sex married couples directly.
BUT you could derive an estimate by subtracting two universes:

Universe for Table B23010 is Married Couple Families
Universe for B23007 is broader, but the Married Couple Families within the table are opposite-sex only (so sum up married couple families with and without children to get opposite-sex married couple families).

Subtract the second one from the first and that should give you an estimate of same-sex married couple families.

If you want characteristics of same-sex married couples, you probably need to use Public Use Microdata (great detail, but not geographically aligned with places).

Thank you! That works great for our purposes.

I hope you found this already but they updated the B11009 table for the 2019 ACS. You can now find data specifically on same-sex married couples.

www.census.gov/.../5-year.html

I seen those tables, 2019 have opposite and same sex couples tables, however, do you know where I can find those tables from years prior to 2019? I'm not able to find anything from 2018 to 2009 with that info.

Thanks!

My understanding of the Census Bureau process is that this won't happen retroactively. You can always estimate from the PUMS microdata (although in the near future, who knows what's going to happen with the differential privacy algorithms applied to it).