- Aug 20, 2000
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The numbers aren't exact by a long shot, but the statement about gays having to pay more and jump through more hurdles as a result of their sexual orientation seems to be roughly quantifiable. The full article is four pages, I've mirrored the executive summary below.
In other news, single people are still being screwed over. (But only in the rhetorical sense!)
The High Price of Being a Gay Couple
In other news, single people are still being screwed over. (But only in the rhetorical sense!)
The High Price of Being a Gay Couple
For years, we?ve heard from gay couples about all the extra health, legal and other costs they bear. So we set out to determine what they were and to come up with a round number ? a couple?s lifetime cost of being gay.
Our goal was to create a hypothetical gay couple whose situation would be similar to a heterosexual couple?s. So we gave the couple two children and assumed that one partner would stay home for five years to take care of them. We also considered the taxes in the three states that have the highest estimated gay populations ? New York, California and Florida.
We gave our couple an income of $140,000, which is about the average income in those three states for unmarried same-sex partners who are college-educated, 30 to 40 years old and raising children under the age of 18.
Here is what we came up with. In our worst case, the couple?s lifetime cost of being gay was $467,562. But the number fell to $41,196 in the best case for a couple with significantly better health insurance, plus lower taxes and other costs.