Poverty among Same-Sex Couple Families in the United States: Is There a Premium for Married Couples?

Drawing on the official poverty thresholds and using the poverty rate, previous literature has shown that families headed by gay couples have lower unconditional levels of poverty than those headed by married different-sex couples. The latter have lower levels than those headed by lesbian couples, who in turn have lower levels than those of cohabiting different-sex couples. Our analysis takes a step forward by checking whether this ranking persists when: a) employing poverty indicators that allow moving beyond the poverty incidence, b) measuring not only absolute poverty but also relative poverty, and c) distinguishing between married and cohabiting same-sex couples to determine if they have the same marriage premium as different-sex couples do. We determine the poverty levels in the actual income distribution and in a counterfactual in which the groups are equal regarding basic characteristics that are associated with poverty. We do not find a marriage premium for same-sex couples. Married same-sex couples tend to have more conditional poverty than their cohabiting peers do when we move beyond the poverty incidence, with differences among these two groups in the very low tail of their income distributions.