Hephaestion
Deeply Shallow
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 24243
Location: Where the Wild Things Are...
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 Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 11:24 am Post subject: Queers and poverty |
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US study looks at poor among gays, lesbians
| Quote: | Lesbian couples are more likely to be poor than married heterosexuals, and children of same-sex parents are twice as likely to live in poverty as those of traditional married couples, a new report shows.
UCLA's Williams Institute, which studies gay issues, says its report out today is the first to analyze poverty among gay and lesbian couples.
The report is an analysis of the most recent data on same-sex unmarried partners from the 2000 Census and two smaller surveys that include questions on sexual orientation. Together, it argues, they debunk "a popular stereotype (that) paints lesbians and gay men as an affluent elite."
Unlike the upper-middle-class gay characters on TV's The L Word and Will and Grace, "There are clearly many poor lesbian, gay and bisexual people," says co-author Lee Badgett, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
"That alone is an important finding," Badgett says.
[...]
Even though single mothers are most likely to be poor, Badgett says, the study did not focus on single lesbians and gay men because most population surveys don't ask about sexual orientation unless respondents volunteer that they are living with a same-sex partner.
[...]
Robert Rector, a poverty scholar at the conservative Heritage Foundation, calls the study "garbage."
He says it is flawed because by studying only couples, it overlooks a larger group in poverty, single mothers.
"When you look at it, this is ... a very small group," says Rector. |
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"The dignity of an animal is measured by his capacity to revolt in the face of oppression." -- Mikhail Bakunin |
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Crippled_Newsie
USian Hikikomori
Joined: 11 Apr 2006
Posts: 886
Location: Where the trees claw at the windows.
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| Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:02 pm Post subject: |
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An important group also left out are those single people forced into poverty by medical bills following seroconversion.
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"You may say you don't hate us, but the people you vote for do, so what's the difference?" --Larry Kramer |
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