Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

Overview

Understandably, many researchers are interested in data about sexual orientation and gender identity. The Census Bureau's practices about gathering data on this topic are evolving all the time.

At this time, the American Community Survey (which is the only data in Census Reporter) does not directly ask questions about either sexual orientation or gender identity. The Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey does ask questions about both, but data is only tabulated down to the state level (and, again, is not available in Census Reporter).

While the American Community Survey does not ask directly about sexual orientation, some information can be obtained from the relationship type data. The householder completing the survey can designate a relationship to another person in the household as either "same-sex husband/wife/spouse" or "same-sex unmarried partner" (among other options). This data is tabulated in two tables.

Table B09019 Household Type (Including Living Alone) by Relationship counts individuals, but the householder's sexual orientation is not explicit. To get the estimated number of same-sex partnered people in a geography, one would need to double the values in the "Same-sex spouse" and "Same-sex unmarried partner" columns. Note that there is a "collapsed" (simplified) version of this table, C09019, but the same-sex columns are some of those which are collapsed, so that table is not helpful for these questions.

Table Coupled Households by Type counts both married and cohabiting same-sex couples, with distinct counts for male-male and female-female in each case. However, table B1109 is only reported down to the state level, so its utility is limited.