In a development that the U.S. Census Bureau says reflects the growing diversity of “families” in the U.S., new estimates show that there are now more than one million same-sex couples living together in the United States.
Estimates from the bureau’s 2019 Current Population Survey also indicate there are 191,000 children living with same-sex parents.
Numbers published Tuesday by the bureau show that around 543,000 married same-sex couples live together with 469,000 unmarried same-sex couples living together. The new figures count only same-sex couples living together and do not reflect non-cohabitating same-sex couples or single people.
This is the first year in the survey that a same-sex option was included in the question about household relationships and that gender-neutral questions about parents were included, according to the bureau.
There are concerns the data misses large groups of the LGBT population because it does not include those without a partner, or people who identify as bisexual living with the opposite-sex.
Meghan Maury, policy director for the National LGBT Task Force, told Roll Call: ‘It’s significant progress and we are excited about it, but we’re really missing quite a lot of community data.’
Rep. Raul M. Grijalva wants to include questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in federal surveys. He said: ‘The fact that the question gets asked there would be at least some assurance we will have the data.’
