Same-gender female couples make $30,000 less a year than their male counterparts

Every day, US households establish their own individual sense of order: who’s picking up the kids from daycare? Who needs to work late? Who is making (or ordering) dinner? Who needs to travel to see a client?

Research has shown that over time, these shared decisions add up. In different-gender couples, men have historically been more likely to take on jobs that require longer hours, which can result in higher earnings. Women have tended to take on more domestic labour, including child care, which can suppress their income.

But little has been known about how these decisions affect same-gender households.

A new report aims to shed more light on these dynamics.

An analysis published last month took a closer look at the disparities same-gender female couples face compared with other households. The research, undertaken by the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, an economic-focused policy think tank, found an income gap of nearly $30,000 between same-gender female and male couples.

It also found that the wage advantages same-gender couples have over different-gender couples – being dual earners, having higher education and living in urban areas – did not benefit same-gender female couples in the same way they did male couples.

Lauren Bauer, an associate director at the Hamilton Project who led the research, said the analysis is the “starting line” to understanding how different families organize their households and how that could affect their total earnings. The analysis considered a couple’s earnings as a single “family unit” – while same-gender couples are more likely to have another contributor in their household, researchers did not include roommates’ earnings.

“People don’t realise how much the way you organise your household affects household income,” Ms Bauer said. “You don’t make choices by yourself.”

The data also emphasises “the extent to which there are pay gaps resulting from discrimination that is putting particular kinds of families at an unfair disadvantage,” Ms Bauer said. “And there are real consequences to that.”

Meghan Lewis has been thinking about the long-term effects of these income gaps and how they could affect her and her partner’s ability to build a life together.

A 23-year-old administrative assistant, Ms Lewis lives with her partner and a roommate in Alexandria, Va.

Ms Lewis’s partner, who is nonbinary, recently found out about a pay disparity at work: A white man in the same role received a starting bonus and money to cover relocation and is earning a higher salary than her partner, Ms Lewis said.

Both Ms Lewis and her partner, who is 24, work full time and contribute to household management, Ms Lewis said. She ultimately wants to work in corporate marketing, while her partner would like to work in psychology, either as a therapist or doing clinical work. Ms Lewis said she has the potential to make more money than her partner, particularly when her partner goes back to school.

Her “ultimate goal” is to make enough money to retire early, so she can devote her energy to fostering children, Ms Lewis said.

“If we had kids, I don’t think either of us would become a stay-at-home parent immediately,” she said.

The Hamilton Project analysis uses data from 2015 to 2019 from the American Community Survey, an annual survey conducted every year by the Census Bureau. Bauer credits Hamilton Project senior research assistant Moriah Macklin with spearheading the project.

The research builds on previous studies that have mined census data for disparities between same-gender and different-gender couples. These comparisons are still relatively new, Ms Bauer noted.

Previous census data found same-sex married couples had a higher median income than opposite-sex married couples. People in these same-sex partnerships were also more likely to both be working. But other studies have complicated that view.

A Pew Research Center analysis from last year found striking disparities between individuals in same-gender relationships. The median household income for men in same-sex marriages was substantially higher than other households’, at $132,000 per year. Women in same-sex marriages had the second-highest median household income, at $101,900, followed by men and women in opposite-sex marriages, who both hovered around $90,000.

But those numbers don’t capture each partner’s contributions, which can vary greatly in different-gender families, Bauer said.

This is because, for most families, “the way to maximise household income is for one partner to have a higher-paying job,” Ms Bauer said. She cited the work of Harvard University economics professor Claudia Goldin, whose research has shown that the way to have a higher-paying job is not simply to be better educated but “to be available all the time,” Ms Bauer said.

This is not something partners can both do, necessarily, especially if there are children involved, Ms Bauer said. And because of a mix of factors - historical gender norms, a deeply segregated labor market and personal preferences – men in different-gender couples tend to be higher earners.

“It doesn’t behoove us to assume the same decisions are being made” by same-gender couples, Ms Bauer said.

When compared with that of different-gender couples, the median income of same-gender female households was similar: Same-gender female married couples tended to make slightly less than opposite-gender married couples, while those in unmarried same-gender female partnerships made slightly more.

But same-gender male couples made significantly more than both groups – nearly $30,000 more than women coupled with a woman, regardless of whether they were married. That gap alone is “pretty close to the median income of a single parent,” Ms Bauer said.

In less than 40 years, that gap translates to a $1 million difference in earnings.

And unlike some other studies, this analysis also accounts for factors that could boost a household’s total earnings.

The fact that female couples’ incomes are similar to incomes of opposite-gender couples is notable, Ms Bauer noted. The latter are more likely to have just one earner in the household, have less education and live in places with lower costs of living.

The advantages that drive up the total household income for same-gender male partnerships – higher education, dual earners – aren’t being reflected in households led by two women, Ms Bauer said. Those factors “are not trumping all of the things that come with being a woman – and a woman in a same-sex relationship – in the labor market,” she said.

Nicole Perry, a 33-year-old Black and disabled transgender woman living in Seattle, said she was not surprised by the research.

A military veteran who worked in information technology for two and a half years, Ms Perry said she left the industry because she “wasn’t getting anywhere” post-transition.

Although Ms Perry had heard about pay gaps, she said she was always too scared to ask her colleagues what they made - afraid that a manager would find out she was probing for wage information, or that her colleagues would get angry with her.

As a Black trans woman with a disability, she felt especially vulnerable to her employers’ prejudices. “If they wanted, there’s any number of reasons why I could be fired,” she said.

Ms Perry now works as a paralegal and direct-services coordinator for the Lavender Rights Project, an LGBTQ advocacy group. It was the first job to give her a salary rather than an hourly wage. She now earns enough to rent a home with her partners, who are trans, nonbinary femmes and women. Not all of them are able to work, because of issues with disabilities, she said. She is the home’s primary breadwinner.

Earning an extra $30,000 a year could mean owning their own home, instead of renting one, Ms Perry said. They would also be able to give back to their community – such as by buying a car to help other marginalised queer people who don’t have transportation.

In recent years, more attention has been paid to LGBT+ pay disparities, including in a recent report that found trans women are the lowest-paid LGBT+ group. Some studies have also shown a “sexuality” pay gap between gay men and heterosexual men, but Ms Bauer cautioned against making any conclusions about a “double pay gap” for women when reviewing this data. There is simply not enough detail to do so, she said.

“Some portion of that [gap] is discrimination against women, and some portion of that is discrimination against women in same-sex relationships,” Ms Bauer said.

But, “until the census is able to collect data on gender identity, sexual orientation and more categories of relationship status that captures how resources are shared ... we’re going to have to handle these data with care and not try to over-interpret findings,” Ms Bauer said.

Ms Bauer speculated that same-gender female couples probably have a more equal split in terms of balancing work and domestic duties, which has certain financial trade-offs. “Specialisation” – maximising the earnings of one partner – “is lucrative,” she said. Ms Bauer also guesses that same-gender male couples may be more similar to different-gender couples in this way.

“I think this is going to be an interesting and hard thing to study,” Ms Bauer said. “We’re at the very beginning of understanding these dynamics.”

The Washington Post