Comparative Marriage Markets: Availability of Union Formation for Same-Sex and Male-Female Unions in the United States

Eric Ketcham , City University of New York (CUNY)

Marriage markets for male-female unions have been studied for decades to better understand the extent to which suitable partners exist for a given individual interested in a partner of a different sex. However, no comparable research has been done on the same-sex marriage market. The current paper seeks to extend the existing research to investigate whether marriage markets for LGBT-identified individuals are balanced. The number of LGBT-identified individuals at given ages are calculated using the Gallup Daily tracking poll (Gallup 2018). Age preferences will be calculated using observed cohabiting same-sex couples in the 2010 Census 10% PUMS (Ruggles et al. 2018). Calculations will be made using Goldman and colleagues’ Availability Ratio (1984) as well as Lampard’s Iterated Availability Ratio (1993), adapted to reflect same-sex rather than different-sex marriage markets.

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 Presented in Session 4. Marriage, Family, Households, & Unions